Taylor Swift has never gotten the credit she deserves for her savvy and sensitivity to important legal issues, including her decision to stand up to a bogus defamation lawsuit filed against her by a man who groped her. She is also a generational icon who is adored in my household in particular. Both of those things make her now repeated threats to file what are known as “strategic lawsuits against public participation” — commonly called “SLAPP suits” — against comparatively powerless people so much more disappointing.
There is virtually no circumstance in which a person may lawfully be prohibited from publishing publicly available, truthful information, especially on matters of public concern.
The most recent threat, first reported by The Washington Post, was sent by Swift’s lawyers at Venable LLP to college student Jack Sweeney. Sweeney is an irritator of billionaires whose schtick is posting publicly available information through social media accounts that track the private jet use of some of the world’s richest people, including Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Kim Kardashian and Swift. Sweeney first came to prominence after Musk accused him of publishing “basically assassination coordinates” through Sweeney’s social media account “ElonJet” and then threatened to sue him over the matter. Now, Sweeney is in Swift’s crosshairs for the same reason.
Swift’s worries are understandable. Sweeney’s information has been used to track her many private flights — including documenting her trips between shows on her ongoing “Eras Tour” and the NFL games of her romantic partner, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce. Given her fame and celebrity, Swift has constant security concerns, including threats from stalkers and others who may wish to do her harm. Given that context, it is hard not to empathize with Swift’s desire to keep the details of her private jet use private.
What is more difficult to stomach is Swift’s…
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