California Anti-SLAPP Law: Motions, Fees, and SLAPPback

California’s anti-SLAPP law, codified at Code of Civil Procedure section 425.16, lets a defendant file an early motion to strike a lawsuit brought to punish them for speaking out or petitioning the government. If the motion succeeds, the case ends and the plaintiff pays the defendant’s attorney’s fees. Discovery freezes the moment the motion is filed, the hearing happens on a compressed schedule, and either side can take an immediate appeal from the ruling. The Legislature directed courts to read the statute broadly.¹

What Speech and Conduct the Statute Covers

The motion is available whenever a claim arises from an act “in furtherance of the person’s right of petition or free speech under the United States Constitution or the California Constitution in connection with a public issue.” The statute breaks that down into four categories:

Written or oral statements made before a legislative, executive, or judicial body, or any other official proceeding authorized by law.
Written or oral statements made in connection with an issue under consideration or review by such a body.
Written or oral statements made in a place open to the public or a public forum about an issue of public interest.
Any other conduct in furtherance of free speech or petition rights concerning a public issue or an issue of public interest.

The fourth category is a catchall, and it has a narrower reach than it looks. In FilmOn.com v. DoubleVerify, the California Supreme Court held that content alone is not enough; the speech must also functionally contribute to public conversation about the issue. Confidential reports a company prepared for profit and shared only with paying clients did not qualify, even though they touched on a topic the public cared about.²

How the Motion Works

The anti-SLAPP motion runs on a two-step framework. First, the defendant must show the lawsuit arises from protected activity. If the defendant meets that threshold, the burden shifts to the plaintiff to show a probability of prevailing on the claim.¹

Step one is usually straightforward when the claim obviously targets speech or petitioning. Step two is where most motions are won or lost. The plaintiff must put forward admissible evidence that, if believed, would support a judgment in the plaintiff’s favor. The court does not weigh conflicting evidence or judge witness credibility. It is a paper screen: enough to go forward, or not.

Deadlines

A defendant has 60 days from service of the complaint to file the motion. Courts can allow a later filing on terms they choose, so missing the deadline is not automatically fatal, but a defendant who waits without a reason should expect resistance.¹

Once the motion is filed, the clerk must set the hearing within 30 days after service unless the court’s calendar forces a later date. The compressed timeline is deliberate. The statute exists to get the case resolved before the defendant is bled dry by discovery.

What Changes Once the Motion Is Filed

Filing the motion flips several defaults in the defendant’s favor.

Discovery Freezes

All discovery stops the moment the motion is filed and stays stopped until the court rules. Discovery is often the most expensive phase of a lawsuit, and plaintiffs who file SLAPP suits sometimes use it as leverage. A plaintiff who needs discovery to oppose the motion can ask the court for permission by showing good cause, but that requires a separate noticed motion and the request must be narrowly focused on the issues the anti-SLAPP motion raises.¹

No Amendment to Dodge the Motion

A plaintiff cannot amend the complaint to escape the motion without the court’s permission. That rule blocks the tactic of rewriting the same speech-based claims in new language once the original pleading starts looking vulnerable.

Immediate Right to Appeal

An order granting or denying the motion is immediately appealable. Most pretrial rulings have to wait for a final judgment before they can be appealed. The Legislature carved out an exception because the statute’s protective purpose would be gutted if a defendant whose motion was wrongly denied had to sit through a trial first.

Attorney’s Fees

A defendant who wins the motion is entitled to reasonable attorney’s fees and costs from the plaintiff. The fee award is mandatory, not discretionary, and the court sets the amount based on the complexity of the case and the work defense counsel put in.¹ The fee-shifting is the statute’s sharpest deterrent: a plaintiff who files a SLAPP suit risks a court order to pay the other side’s legal bills.

The rule runs both ways. If a court finds a defendant’s motion was frivolous or filed solely to delay the case, the plaintiff recovers fees and costs. Judges can also impose additional sanctions on parties or attorneys who misuse the process.

Claims the Statute Doesn’t Reach

Not every lawsuit that involves speech qualifies for an anti-SLAPP motion. Section 425.17 carves out two exemptions worth checking before filing or opposing a motion.

Public Interest Enforcement Actions

The motion is unavailable against a claim brought solely in the public interest or on behalf of the general public if three conditions are met: the plaintiff seeks no greater personal relief than other members of the public, a win would enforce an important public right and benefit a large class of people, and private enforcement is necessary and places a disproportionate financial burden on the plaintiff compared to their personal stake.³

Commercial Speech

Businesses cannot use the statute to defeat consumer claims when the speech at issue is a factual representation about the business’s own products or a competitor’s products, made to actual or potential customers to promote sales. The California Supreme Court has told lower courts to read this exemption narrowly, and the party invoking it carries the burden of proof. The exemption applies only when the statement giving rise to the claim itself meets the statutory criteria. A business cannot invoke it just because a defamatory remark happened to appear next to a promotional statement.³

Striking Part of a Claim

Plaintiffs sometimes bundle a speech-based claim with a stronger claim based on unprotected conduct, hoping the whole package survives together. The California Supreme Court shut that tactic down in Baral v. Schnitt. When a single cause of action mixes allegations of protected and unprotected activity, the court evaluates the protected allegations separately and strikes them if the plaintiff cannot show a probability of prevailing on those specific allegations. The rest of the claim moves forward.⁴

When the Case Is in Federal Court

Whether California’s anti-SLAPP statute applies in federal diversity cases is unsettled. The Ninth Circuit’s 1999 decision in Newsham v. Lockheed held that it does, and that precedent is technically still in force. In its 2025 en banc decision in Gopher Media v. Melone, the court assumed without deciding that the statute applies and overruled prior circuit precedent that had allowed interlocutory appeal of anti-SLAPP denials in federal court. A federal defendant who loses the motion can no longer take an immediate appeal.⁵ Until the circuit resolves the underlying question, a defendant in federal diversity litigation in California can file the motion but should not count on an immediate appeal if it fails.

SLAPPback: Suing the Plaintiff

A defendant who wins an anti-SLAPP motion can turn around and sue the former plaintiff for malicious prosecution or abuse of process. The Legislature calls this a “SLAPPback” and gives it its own procedural rules. If the original plaintiff responds by filing their own anti-SLAPP motion against the SLAPPback, they must do so within 120 days of service, which the court can extend to six months or, in extraordinary circumstances, longer. Several of the usual anti-SLAPP protections do not carry over to a motion against a SLAPPback, and if the original SLAPP suit was illegal as a matter of law, the party who filed it cannot bring an anti-SLAPP motion against the SLAPPback at all.⁶

1
California Legislative Information. California Code of Civil Procedure CCP 425-16
2
Justia Law. FilmOn.com Inc. v. DoubleVerify Inc.
3
California Legislative Information. California Code of Civil Procedure CCP 425-17
4
Justia Law. Baral v. Schnitt
5
United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Gopher Media LLC v. Melone
6
California Legislative Information. California Code of Civil Procedure CCP 425.18