Simmons Lawsuit
In what was apparently a first-of-its-kind ruling for which there was no established precedent, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge has thrown out fitness guru Richard Simmons' defamation lawsuit against the
National Enquirer for the tabloid's claim that Simmons was undergoing the transitioning process associated with an alleged forthcoming sex change operation. The judge, while acknowledging that a sizable percentage of the population may be prejudiced against transgender individuals, ruled that the
Enquirer's story, even if false, was not sufficiently defamatory to constitute libel, unless specific harm could be shown to have resulted from it.