Murawski v. Gunzburger [1]

William Murawski, a frequent political candidate, sued Ron Gunzburger, who runs Politics1.com [2], for defamation and violating his First Amendment rights. Murawski alleged that Gunzburger violated his First Amendment rights by refusing to list his name as a candidatefor New York governor on Politics1.com. He also alleged that Gunzburger defamed him when he later added Murawski's name to the website by placing it close enough to a Communist Party candidate that search engine results for his name pulled up a snippet of text showing Murawski's name immediately after the words "Communist Political Organizer."

Murawski brought other claims against several additional defendants, including the New York State Board of Elections, several current and former New York government officials, Yahoo!, and IAC/Interactive Corp. (which runs Ask.com).

Gunzburger moved to dismiss the claims against him and for sanctions against Murawski.  The court granted [3] his motion to dismiss, ruling that, because Gunzburger was not a government actor, Murawski could not bring a claim against him for violation of his First Amendment rights. The court rejected the defamation claim as well, ruling that Gunzburger did not identify Murawski as a communist on his website and that the displayed search engine results were not attributable to Gunzburger.

The court denied Gunzburger's motion for sanctions, however, because Murawski was representing himself pro se and may not have been aware of the possibility of sanctions when he wrote his original complaint.

The court also dismissed Murawski's claim against IAC/Interactive for reproducing Gunzburger's list and failing to remove Politics1.com from its directory, relying on section 230 of the Communications Decency Act [4]. In addition, the court dismissed the claims against Yahoo! and several of the government officials.  The case is still pending against the New York State Board of Elections, but the remaining claims do not relate to online speech in any way.