A coalition of groups representing publishers, booksellers and librarians led by the Association of American Publishers (AAP) has filed a brief urging the Texas Supreme Court not to review a ruling by the Texas Court of Appeals in Houston, an intermediate appellate court, which granted summary judgment to Harvest House Publishers in a libel action brought by a group called The Local Church. The brief characterizes the ruling by the Texas Court of Appeals as “correct in all respects.”

Harvest House's the Encyclopedia of Cults and New Religions mentioned and included The Local Church, which the group claimed was defamatory because of the general comments regarding characteristics of cults. The Texas trial court denied a motion for summary judgment, but the Texas Court of Appeals reversed.

The Texas Court of Appeals held that the determination that a group is a cult “is not actionable because the truth or falsity of the statement depends upon one's religious beliefs, an ecclesiastical matter which cannot and should not be tried in a court of law,” AAP said in a statement.

Citing the Local Church's “history of suing its critics,” the brief said that “the 'chilling effect' of meritless libel litigation occurs because publishers are deterred from engaging in truthful or nondefamatory speech by the enormous costs of defending defamation lawsuits.”

The brief argues that if the case is accepted for review by the Court and reversed, The Local Church's “untenably expansive interpretation of the 'of and concerning' requirement would open authors and publishers of compendia and survey texts to liability for general introductory commentary that no reasonable reader would take to apply to every person or group discussed in the book.”

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