Young Chiefs fan's defamation lawsuit against Deadspin to move forward: 'Crossed the fine line'
A Delaware judge ruled Monday that the Armenta family’s lawsuit against Deadspin for accusing their son of wearing "blackface" at a Chiefs game last year can proceed.
In 2023, Deadspin writer Carron Phillips wrote an article using an image of nine-year-old Holden Armenta sporting black and red Kansas City Chiefs face paint at a game, showing only the black half of his face. Phillips accused Holden of finding a way to "hate Black people and the Native Americans at the same time" and accused his parents of teaching him "hatred."
Holden’s parents Raul Jr. and Shannon later filed a lawsuit in February accusing the sports blog of maliciously attacking Holden by selectively posting only one half of his face and accusing them of racism.
On Monday, Superior Court Judge Sean Lugg denied Deadspin’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit, agreeing that the blog posted "provable false assertions" as facts rather than opinion.
"Deadspin published an image of a child displaying his passionate fandom as a backdrop for its critique of the NFL’s diversity efforts and, in its description of the child, crossed the fine line protecting its speech from defamation claims," the judge wrote.
"Having reviewed the complaint, the court concludes that Deadspin’s statements accusing [Holden] of wearing black face and Native headdress ‘to hate black people and the Native American at the same time,’ and that he was taught this hatred by his parents, are provable false assertions of fact and are therefore actionable," Lugg added.
Lugg also refused to dismiss the case based on the assertion that the case should have been filed in the Armenta family’s home state of California rather than Delaware, where Deadspin’s parent company G/O Media resides. G/O Media later sold Deadspin to Lineup Publishing one month after the lawsuit was filed.
A representative from G/O Media declined to comment to Fox News Digital.
Deadspin did not retract the original article. However, an editor’s note was added to address the controversy.
"We regret any suggestion that we were attacking the fan or his family. To that end, our story was updated on Dec. 7 to remove any photos, tweets, links, or otherwise identifying information about the fan. We have also revised the headline to better reflect the substance of the story," the note read.
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The headline was also changed from "The NFL needs to speak out against the Kansas City Chiefs fan in Black face, Native headdress" to "The NFL Must Ban Native Headdress And Culturally Insensitive Face Paint in the Stands."
Phillips initially doubled down on his accusations in a since-deleted X post.
"For the idiots in my mentions who are treating this as some harmless act because the other side of his face was painted red, I could make the argument that it makes it even worse. Y'all are the ones who hate [M]exican but wear sombreros on cinco [de Mayo]," Phillips said.