The legislature finds and declares that full participation by persons and organizations and robust discussion of issues of public concern before the legislative, judicial, and administrative bodies and in other public fora are essential to the democratic process, that there has been a disturbing increase in lawsuits brought primarily to chill the valid exercise of the constitutional rights of freedom of speech and petition for the redress of grievances; that such litigation is disfavored and should be resolved quickly with minimum cost to citizens who have participated in matters of public concern.
R.I. Gen. Laws § 9-33-1
Findings
Applied in 7 court decisions — leading case Baker v. Parsons (2001)
Most recently applied in Warren Whisenhunt v. Matthew Lippincott and Creg Parks (October 2013)
P.L. 1993, ch. 354, § 1; P.L. 1993, ch. 448, § 1.
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
Official source: Rhode Island General Assembly. Reproduced from public-domain Rhode Island statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.