(Daily Signal)—Transgender activists tried to hound a Georgia real estate agent out of business because the realtor urged a public library to move a sexually explicit book out of the children’s section. When she sued, the judge dismissed her case and ordered her to pay the activists’ legal fees.
Now, the Georgia Court of Appeals has taken up her case and her attorney just filed her official brief Thursday, a copy of which was exclusively provided to The Daily Signal. Her supporters say the case may set a precedent that gets to the heart of cancel culture.
“They completely misstated, misquoted me in order to try and cancel me,” Julie Mauck, the realtor, told The Daily Signal in a Friday interview. “They actually filed an ethics complaint for hate speech against me” based on the misquote.
She also recalled activists attacking her as a “biblical terrorist.”
When Mauck filed a defamation lawsuit against the activists, a trial court judge struck down the lawsuit, claiming that it violated an anti-SLAPP law (a law designed to protect people from frivolous defamation lawsuits).
The Coalition for Liberty, a nonprofit organization, is supporting Mauck in her case. Doug Turpin, the coalition’s president, warned that the anti-SLAPP ruling sets a dangerous precedent.
“If somebody knowingly lied about you in a vindictive matter to try to get you fired from your job … and then you try to defend yourself by going to the courts for redress, then you would owe them their lawyers’ fees and lose in an anti-SLAPP even if what you were filing a lawsuit for is completely true,” he told The Daily Signal.
The Library Comments
The legal case stretches back to comments Mauck made at a Oconee County Public Library Board of Trustees meeting on July 10, 2023.
She argued that the library should move the book “Flamer” by Mike Curato—which includes images of naked teenage boys and descriptions of genitals, sexual behavior, profanity, and derogatory terms—from the kids’ section to the adults’ section of the library. She also noted that some pedophiles, who often describe themselves as “minor-attracted persons,” try to insinuate themselves into the “plus” part of the acronym LGBTQ+.
Mauck told The Daily Signal that she ultimately prevailed—the library board voted unanimously to move the book to the adult section.
A female transgender activist, who goes by either “Fiona Bell” or “Felix Bell” depending on the circumstances, stood behind Mauck during the meeting with a sign reading “JOY is ALL ages!”
The Attempt to ‘Cancel’ Mauck
Bell and another transgender activist, Danielle Carmella Bonanno, reached out to Mauck’s broker, Bob Allen, to complain about Mauck’s comments and suggest Allen should discipline her or terminate their relationship. (Real estate agents in Georgia must work with a broker to conduct business.)
Bonanno, a man identifying as a woman who says he is president of the Athens Pride & Queer Collective, sent Allen an email that very night expressing “deep concern” about what he described as Mauck’s “recent discriminatory behavior towards the LGBTQ+ community.” He claimed she referred “to LGBTQ+ individuals as pedophiles.”
“I would like to emphasize that this conduct is in clear violation of Article 10 of the [National Association of Realtors] Code of Ethics, which prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity,” Bonnano wrote. He suggested Allen take “disciplinary action.”
The next day, Allen informed Mauck that he would stop serving as her real estate broker, though he didn’t formally separate from her until Aug. 11.
Bell emailed Allen on July 13, falsely claiming that Mauck “made a public display of calling the entire LGBTQ community ‘pedophiles,’ along with calling for censorship of LGBTQ-related material.”
On the same day, Bell submitted an ethics complaint against Mauck to the Georgia Association of Realtors, repeating her claim that Mauck called “the entire LGBTQ community ‘pedophiles’” and supported censorship. She signed the ethics complaint as “Fiona Bell.”
Allen, Mauck’s broker, received the ethics complaint from the Georgia Realtors organization on Aug. 11, and formally ended his partnership with Mauck that day. David Steele became Mauck’s broker on Oct. 18, but between Aug. 12 and Oct. 17, she couldn’t work as a real estate agent.
While she only went without a broker for “a couple of months,” Mauck told The Daily Signal that she then “took a year to study and get my broker’s license,” effectively preventing her from doing business for over a year.
The Georgia Association of Realtors ruled that Mauck had indeed violated its ethics code, but when Mauck appealed, the association dropped the complaint.
“After I sent them a letter saying I was planning to go to the media and take legal action against GAR, they decided maybe she wasn’t actually guilty of this,” Turpin told The Daily Signal.
During the appeal process, a member of the GAR panel said Mauck violated Article 10 in part because pedophiles are a protected class. The association hasn’t formally stated that it considers pedophiles to be a protected class and Mauck’s successful appeal suggests it does not do so.
Bonanno reached out to Mauck’s new broker in an email on Jan. 16, 2024, repeating the claim that Mauck referred to “the LGBTQ+ community as pedophiles.”
The Lawsuit
Mauck filed the lawsuit in June 2024, claiming that Bonnano and Athens Pride “willfully disparaged ” Mauck “by false or misleading representation of fact,” even “knowing such conduct was deceptive,” in violation of Georgia’s Uniform Deceptive Trade Practices Act.
The lawsuit also claims that Fiona/Felix Bell violated Georgia law against “tortious interference with a business relationship” by filing the ethics complaint and emailing Allen. Finally, the suit accuses Bell of engaging in “libel per quod,” defaming Mauck.
A trial court judge dismissed the case under anti-SLAPP law on Nov. 11, 2024. Jonathan Vogel, Mauck’s attorney, told The Daily Signal Friday that anti-SLAPP laws serve an important purpose but that this dismissal represents an abuse of them.
Anti-SLAPP statutes “are meant to curtail lawsuits that are without merit and are just trying to stop people from exercising their First Amendment right of free speech or right to petition.” Such laws “address only those issues that are matters of public interest or public concern.”
“In this case, Julie brought this lawsuit against those communications that these individuals and organization had with her broker… and with the Georgia Association of Realtors,” Vogel added. “They were private interests—and really, a private vendetta—to try to get Julie terminated from her livelihood and disciplined by the Georgia Association of Realtors and unfortunately they were successful for a time.”
The lawyer noted that a recent Georgia Court of Appeals’ ruling in a similar case gives him reason to hope the court will resurrect Mauck’s lawsuit. In Stephanie Britt v. Savannah Sharks Cheerleading, the appeals court vacated the trial court’s dismissal of a defamation lawsuit on anti-SLAPP grounds.
Vogel said he is confident that the appeals court will vacate the trial court’s dismissal in Mauck’s case, as well, remanding the case back to the lower court to be resolved.
Getting to the Heart of Cancel Culture
“That’s going to be a very important precedent because it goes right to the heart of cancel culture,” Vogel said. “Attempts to defame people to their employers to get them fired are going to backfire if they cause damages.”
Turpin, the Coalition for Liberty president, noted a 2022 Rasmussen poll finding that 77% of respondents said they are concerned that “school-age children are being exposed to sexual material that is not age appropriate.”
Most Americans “do not think that highly sexual books should be available for five-year-olds. It’s a very common position,” he said.
The woke activists “cannot win and they know they can’t win because their opinions are very unpopular, other than through cancel culture. Our objective is to end cancel culture, end the knowing lies told about Americans just to get them fired from their jobs, destroy their reputations. We’re going to file lawsuits and hold them accountable.”
“We want everyday Americans to know Coalition for Liberty has got your back,” Turpin declared. “If somebody is doing this to you, we will file a lawsuit against them and make sure that they are named and shamed in the media.”
“It’s the greatest weapon of the Left,” he said of cancel culture. “We’re going to take that away from them.”
