The speaker’s comments, the Virginia Court of Appeals held, “comments constitute non-actionable opinions based on fully disclosed facts.”
Eugene Volokh | 10.28.2025 3:02 PM
From Pestrak v. Sawyers, decided last week by the Virginia Court of Appeals (Judge Vernida Chaney, joined by Judges Frank Friedman and Stuart Raphael):
In December 2017, Petrak, who led the “Prince William Committee (PWC) for Quality Education” and had previously pursued recall efforts to oust Sawyers from his Chairman position, publicly responded to a prior 2014 comment made by Sawyers on Facebook. Sawyers had commented on a local librarian’s public photograph, referring to her as “[s]uch a LILF.” {Sawyers did not dispute that he called the librarian “such a LILF.” Petrak maintains the acronym referred to a distasteful innuendo. However, Sawyers testified that LILF meant “Librarian I’d Like to Fund.”}
In response, Petrak posted in the public Facebook group, “PWC Education Reform,” sharing a series of statements calling Sawyers a “SEXUAL PREDATOR/HARASSER.” These statements were accompanied by screenshots of Sawyers’s LILF comment, a tweet in which Sawyers thanked Senator Al Franken, and a photograph of Franken engaging in inappropriate conduct.
Petrak’s comment reads as follows:
Since our School Board Chairman-at-Large continues to paint false pictures of people with social media, I thought I would share some real disturbing (and truthful) pictures about Ryan Sawyers.
The first picture is of a wom[a]n who posted a professional picture of herself on Facebook. As you can see, her friends made nice comments about the picture. Look closely and see the comment by Ryan Sawyers. It says, “such a LILF[.]” I am told this person is a librarian. So basically, Ryan Sawyers, a married man, is publicly saying on social media that he would like to have sex with this woman. If that isn’t the behavior of a SEXUAL PREDATOR or HARASSER, I don’t know what is.
The second picture is a tweet from Ryan Sawyers thanking Senator Al Franken, another SEXUAL PREDATOR for campaigning in Virginia.
The third picture is of Al Franken groping a …