NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Lawyers for retired NFL quarterback Brett Favre will ask a federal appeals court on Tuesday to revive a defamation lawsuit Favre filed against fellow Pro Football of Famer, former tight end Shannon Sharpeamid a Mississippi welfare scandal that is one of the state’s biggest public corruption cases.
A federal judge in Mississippi rejected the lawsuit in Octobersaying that Sharpe used constitutionally protected speech on a sports broadcast when he criticized Favre’s connection to the case of improper welfare expenditure.
Favre hopes the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will reinstate the case.
Sharpe said during a September 2022 broadcast of the Fox Sports show “Skip and Shannon: Undisputed” that Favre was “taking from the underdog,” that he “stole money from people who really needed that money” and that someone would have to be a sorry “steal from the lowest of the low” person.
Mississippi State Auditor Shad White said that from 2016 to 2019, the Mississippi Department of Human Services improperly spent more than US$77 million from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program – funds designed to help some of the poorest people in the US
Among White’s findings was that Favre improperly received US$1.1 million in speaking fees from a nonprofit organization that spent TANF money with Department of Human Services approval. The money would go toward a $5 million volleyball arena at the University of Southern Mississippi, which he attended and where his daughter played the sport.
Favre paid $1.1 million, but White said in a February court filing that the former quarterback still owes $729,790 because interest caused growth in the original amount he owed.
Favre, who lives in Mississippi, has denied any wrongdoing and does not face criminal charges. He is among more than three dozen people or businesses sued by the state Department of Human Services.
The October ruling by U.S. District Judge Keith Starrett said Sharpe’s comments about the case were constitutionally protected “rhetorical hyperbole.”
“Here, no reasonable person listening to the broadcast would think that Favre actually went into the homes of poor people and took their money – that he committed the crime of robbery/theft against any particular poor person in Mississippi,” Starrett wrote.
Favre’s lawyers said in a brief that the ruling mischaracterized Sharpe’s comments. “Here, a reasonable listener could and would have interpreted Sharpe’s repeated statements to the effect that Favre ‘stole money’ from the ‘disadvantaged’ as factual statements about Favre,” they said.
Sharpe’s lawyers argued in briefs that Starrett got it right, referring to Sharpe’s comments as “loose, figurative language among media commentators about a significant public controversy important to our nation’s discourse.”
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Associated Press writer Emily Wagster Pettus in Jackson, Mississippi, contributed.
