A former Maryland meat-company worker was not defamed by his supervisor’s anti-gay comment, the state’s highest court ruled.
Charles Royall sued his former employer, C&C Meat Sales, as well as his former supervisors, Allen Dicks and Keith Jewell.
Royall alleged that his bosses stated that he was gay throughout his four years of employment.
“These statements are so egregious that they will always be considered defamatory and are assumed to harm my reputation,” he alleged.
Royall said these statements continued years after his employment ended in 2018. He said that in 2021, Dicks told an employee, “Mr. Royall is no longer at C&C … at least we don’t have to smell that fag.”
Jewell allegedly responded with a “right on!” hand gesture.
The circuit court dismissed Royall’s case, stating that the defendant’s actions were not defamatory.
Royall appealed to the Maryland Supreme Court, which ruled that “a false statement about a private person’s sexual orientation is not defamatory per se.”
In this opinion, Chief Justice E. Gregory Wells cited the “legislative and judicial protections” for homosexuals “against disparate treatment in a broad range of core community defining experiences, from marriage, to employment, to accommodations, among others.”
“No matter how many more steps still lie ahead along our judicial journey toward ensuring that litigants in Maryland are treated with equal dignity under the law, adopting a common law presumption that false statements about sexual orientation are defamatory would be a misguided step backward,” he added.
The court also ruled that Jewell’s “fist pump” in support of Dicks’ statement did not qualify as defamation.
“It is simply pleading a ‘bridge too far’ to speculatively stretch the meaning of that single silent and equivocal gesture by Jewell – which Royall does not allege he witnessed – into an affirmative adoption of Dicks’ false statement about Royall’s sexual orientation,” Wells stated.
