Anonymous Online Speakers v. United States District Court for the District of Nevada

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Anonymous Online Speakers v. United States District Court for the District of Nevada (In re Anonymous Online Speakers), 611 F.3d 653 (2010), is a Ninth Circuit decision about when anonymous online posters can be identified in a case involving commercial online statements.

What happened
- Quixtar, a cosmetics and supplements company, sued Signature Management TEAM (TEAM) for tortious interference with existing contracts.
- Quixtar claimed TEAM ran an anonymous Internet smear campaign to drive Quixtar’s distributors away.
- During discovery in the Nevada case, Quixtar asked TEAM to identify three of the five anonymous authors of video and blog posts. TEAM refused, saying First Amendment protection shielded their identities.
- The district court ordered TEAM to disclose the identities of three posters. Both sides sought relief from the Ninth Circuit.

What the Ninth Circuit decided
- The court recognized that anonymous speech is protected by the First Amendment, but the level of protection depends on the nature of the speech.
- The postings in this case were treated as commercial speech because they related to Quixtar’s business practices.
- The district court had used a heightened standard (the Cahill standard), which requires a plaintiff to show evidence strong enough to establish a prima facie case for each element of defamation before discovery can identify anonymous speakers.
- The Ninth Circuit rejected applying the Cahill standard to this commercial-speech context. It said Cahill is too strict for anonymous online commercial speech.
- The court cited other cases to illustrate how protection levels differ for political versus commercial speech and to explain that a discovery standard for anonymous speakers should not be as stringent in commercial cases.
- The court affirmed the district court’s order to disclose the identities of some speakers and denied the petitions. It also instructed the district court to work out the scope and procedures for disclosing the identities.

Impact
- This decision signals that lower courts in the Ninth Circuit should not apply the Cahill (high) standard to discovery requests involving anonymous online commercial speech.
- It leaves open how exactly to handle the disclosure process for commercial-speech cases and invites careful procedural guidance from district courts.
- The ruling may affect how subpoenas to major Internet platforms are handled in similar cases across the Ninth Circuit.