Jennifer L. Cooper, et al. v. US Dominion, Inc., et al.

Petitioners executed affidavits about election worker partisanship in the 2020 general election. Thereafter, they received cease-and-desist letters from counsel for Dominion, a voting systems company. The letters falsely accused petitioners of defamation, threatened litigation, and made demands. Dominion’s P.R. firm gave letter copies, with petitioners’ names and addresses, to the Washington Post. The letters produced confusion and distress in the petitioners and caused them to stop speaking about the election. Petitioners sued. The district court found injury-in-fact for one claim but dismissed the case. A divided Tenth Circuit panel affirmed the dismissal but reversed the finding of injury. The concurring judge expressed “less confidence than the majority” that petitioners lacked standing. The panel designated its opinion non-precedential and refused to publish it. Two questions are presented:

1. Whether the recipients of a cease-and-desist letter—which falsely accuses them of defamation, threatens imminent litigation, demands retractions, requires they preserve texts and emails, and insists they respond, and which is copied to a national newspaper as well as to the recipients—have an injury-in-fact for purposes of Article III standing.

2. Whether the petitioners’ equal protection rights under the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause requires the Tenth Circuit to publish its opinion on injury-in-fact as binding precedent for all circuit litigants, not just the petitioners.