‘OUTRAGEOUS’: Court Rules in Favor of Trans Activists Who Allegedly Lied to Get Real Estate Agent Fired

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—Transgender activists are “weaponizing” a law meant to protect participation in public debate, flipping it “on its head” to further a “personal vendetta” against a Georgia mom and real estate agent whom the activists previously tried to get fired, the mom’s lawyer says.

Julie Mauck, the Georgia mom, publicly addressed a library meeting in July 2023, asking the library to move a sexually explicit book out of the children’s section, and warning that some pedophiles try to claim membership in the LGBTQ+ acronym as part of the “plus.” Transgender activists reached out to her broker and to the Georgia Association of Realtors, claiming that she called “the entire LGBTQ community ‘pedophiles'” and urging disciplinary action.

Mauck sued, and both a trial court and the Georgia Court of Appeals struck down her claim under the Peach State’s anti-SLAPP law. (Anti-SLAPP refers to “strategic lawsuits against public participation.” Such statutes aim to protect Americans from baseless legal attacks meant to stifle public debate.) Jonathan Vogel, Mauck’s attorney, filed an appeal Monday, asking the Georgia Supreme Court to take up the case.

“Should the anti-SLAPP statute be weaponized to enable cancel culture tactics like this?” Vogel asked in an interview with The Daily Signal on Monday. “Surely, it was not enacted for this purpose. It really turns the anti-SLAPP statute on its head.”

“Julie’s speech at the library, that’s the classic protected speech that the anti-SLAPP statute was enacted to protect,” he argued. He called it “outrageous” for “people who mischaracterize what she said and tried to get her fired” to claim the anti-SLAPP law should protect them.

Doug Turpin, president of The Coalition for Liberty, a nonprofit aiming to combat cancel culture that is paying Mauck’s legal fees, warned that the appeals court ruling sets a terrifying precedent. He noted that when courts dismiss a claim based on anti-SLAPP, the party bringing the lawsuit may have to pay the legal fees of the wrongly accused party.

“If this decision is allowed to stand, any activist out there can knowingly lie about a person, get them fired, destroy their reputation, and then if somebody tries to fight back, they will be paying the legal fees,” he told The Daily Signal.

“You just want to shake somebody and say, ‘Are you not listening to what happened? It’s really OK to make up a lie about somebody and try to get them fired based on a lie and that’s OK?'” Mauck, who is also involved with Moms for Liberty, told The Daily Signal.

The Attempt to Fire Mauck

In Georgia, real estate agents must work with a broker. After the library meeting, transgender activists Fiona a.k.a. Felix Bell, and Danielle Carmella Bonanno, reached out to Mauck’s broker, Bob Allen, to suggest he discipline her. According to Mauck, Bell is a woman who identifies as a man and Bonnano is a man who identifies as a woman.

Bonanno told Allen that Mauck engaged in “discriminatory behavior towards the LGBTQ+ community” in violation of the National Association of Realtors Code of Ethics.

Bell told Allen that Mauck “made a public display of calling the entire LGBTQ community ‘pedophiles.'” Bell repeated this claim in an official complaint to the realtors’ association.

Allen stopped serving as Mauck’s broker, leading Mauck to suspend her business for a time until she obtained her own broker’s license. The National Association of Realtors investigated Mauck and cleared her on appeal. The library moved the book to the adults’ section.

“We can confirm that, in 2023, Julie Mauck was a respondent in a GAR Code of Ethics case,” the Georgia Association of Realtors told The Daily Signal in a statement Tuesday. “She was initially found in violation of Article 10 [ of the National Association of REALTORS® Code of Ethics, the article prohibiting discrimination against protected classes], but on appeal the decision was reversed and she was determined not to be in violation of Article 10.”

Problems With the Appeals Court Ruling

Vogel identified two large problems with the appeals court ruling, which Judge Jeff Davis wrote on Nov. 3.

“In the first step, the analysis on whether the anti-SLAPP statute applies, the court has to determine whether the statements were made in connection with an issue of public concern,” the lawyer noted. “In this case, we don’t think that statements that were made about Julie’s employment are issues of public concern. It’s a private vendetta to try to get her fired, it’s your classic cancel culture scenario.”

“How can private communications made to her employer or to her membership association contribute to a public debate? These are not the types of statements that the anti-SLAPP statute was meant to address,” Vogel argued.

The second step in an anti-SLAPP case, according to Georgia Supreme Court precedent, involves whether the plaintiff—in this case Mauck—can show a probability of success in the case.

This represents a preliminary threshold—courts are not supposed to weigh the evidence in the case, only to determine whether the person suing has “hit the elements of a claim.”

Yet Vogel claimed the Georgia Appeals Court departed from that practice. Mauck’s appeal repeatedly states that the court “impermissibly” weighed evidence in the case.

“Now, we have the extreme risk to the public of cancel culture activists weaponizing this, to be able to go after people in an organized way and destroy their lives, and then say, ‘Ha! If you try to do anything to us, you’re going to pay our legal bills,'” Vogel said.

“If the Georgia Supreme Court doesn’t act, they’ll be enabling this kind of precedent to be used against ordinary people,” Turpin said. He warned that transgender activists want to “silence Americans.”

Neither the Georgia Association of Realtors nor Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner, the law firm representing Bell and Bonnano, responded to The Daily Signal’s request for comment by publication time. Judge Davis and Allen declined to comment.

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