NEWS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Knoxville, Tennessee – November 23, 2025 – Elliott Schuchardt, a candidate for the Tennessee General Assembly, is calling for reform of the state’s law of defamation.
Traditionally, Tennessee permitted the recovery of monetary damages, if someone made a false statement about another person. This was known as libel or slander.
In 2019, Tennessee passed a law called the Public Participation Act. The law made it much more difficult to recover on a libel lawsuit in Tennessee.
Schuchardt says that the Public Participation Act should be repealed, as unconstitutional.
The law allows a judge to make decisions about a defamation case on the basis of written affidavits, rather than testimony in court. According to Schuchardt, this violates the due process clause of the 14th Amendment.
According to Schuchardt, due process requires a hearing to determine the facts of a case. “Affidavits, by their very nature, are hearsay and are not admissible as evidence,” he says. According to Schuchardt, “if there is no witness, you can’t read body language and voice tone, to determine credibility.”
Schuchardt says that there are other problems with the Public Participation Act. The Act contains a controversial “fee shifting" provision. The provision forces the plaintiff in a defamation case pay the defendant’s legal fees, if the judge dismisses the case, on the basis of affidavits. According to Schuchardt, the fee shifting provision closes the courthouse doors to litigants. “A plaintiff in a defamation case runs the risk of paying tens of thousands of dollars of legal fees, simply by filing a slander case in Tennessee,” he says.
According to Schuchardt, “this is not consistent with the spirit of the law.” For hundreds of years, courts required each side to pay their own legal fees. Courts only shifted legal fees if a party acted in a bad faith.
According to Schuchardt, the courts are set up to resolve disputes between parties. “When we impose the risk of a $50,000 fine, simply for filing a case, the courts are not doing their job,” he says. “This is a denial of due process, which encourages litigants to take justice into their own hands,” says Schuchardt. “Do we want people shooting each other, or do we want to resolve disputes peacefully in court?” he says.
According to Schuchardt, it is virtually impossible to challenge the law in the Tennessee court system. “If a plaintiff loses a defamation case in the trial court, then the plaintiff runs the risk of having to pay $100,000 in legal fees, simply to have the appellate courts look at the case,” he says.
According to Schuchardt, the law is so bad, that the federal courts in Tennessee are refusing to enforce the Public Participation Act. He says that the Tennessee state courts need to do the same, because the law is unconstitutional on its face.
Schuchardt, a former lawyer, is running for the Tennessee General Assembly in the August 2026 primary. Schuchardt says that he brought these concerns to the attention of his adversary, Elaine Davis, over a year ago. To his knowledge, Davis has introduced no legislation to make the law comply with the state and federal constitutions.
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Schuchardt is a graduate of Cornell University and Columbia Law School. Schuchardt practiced law for nearly thirty years, before running for office. He focused his legal practice on civil liberties issues in the courts.
Schuchardt is the author of America’s Achilles Heel: How to Protect Your Family When America Loses the Reserve Currency. In the book, Schuchardt argues that the United States needs to devalue the dollar to remain competitive as a nation.
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For more information:
Elliott J. Schuchardt
2322 Jockey Run Road
Knoxville, TN 37920
Phone: (865) 304-4374
E-mail: elliott016@gmail.com
Author Website: www.elliott-author.com
Campaign Website: www.elect-schuchardt.com
Campaign blog: www.elliottschuchardt.blogger.com
Book link: Book link at Amazon.com