Personal Jurisdiction in the Shadow of the First Amendment

The doctrinal landscape of internet-based personal jurisdiction is increasingly incoherent. Rules designed for a world of print and physical presence struggle to account for the realities of digital communication. Today, anyone—from journalists to ordinary users—can reach a national audience instantly, often without intending to do so. Yet courts have treated virality and even conversational tagging, such as an @-mention of a forum resident, as evidence that a speaker purposefully directed their speech into that state. When speech alone is treated as the jurisdictional contact, nonresident defendants can be haled into distant courts they never expected, and lawful expression is chilled.

This Note argues that the First Amendment must return to the jurisdictional analysis. In its 1984 decision in Calder v. Jones, the Supreme Court explicitly rejected the idea that speech values had a role to play in determining personal jurisdiction. That doctrinal divorce may have seemed defensible in 1984; however, in the era of social media, it is untenable. Borderless, algorithmically amplified communication means that minimum-contacts analysis cannot fairly be applied without accounting for the chilling effects on lawful speech. The constitutional commitment to “uninhibited, robust, and wide-open” debate requires more than post-hoc substantive defenses; it requires that jurisdictional rules themselves safeguard expressive freedom.

This Note makes an original contribution to the scholarship: While prior commentary has noted confusion in applying Calder v. Jones online, no court or scholar has fully addressed how treating content as jurisdiction-conferring contacts in social media cases chills speech. By connecting personal jurisdiction fairness principles to First Amendment “chilling effect” principles, this Note offers a new framework for jurisdiction in the digital age—one that reflects the realities of online interaction and guards against litigation being used as a tool to silence critics.

Table of Contents Show

Introduction

Imagine tweeting about a national controversy from your living room.[1] The post goes viral and is shared and viewed across the country. Thousands of miles away, someone claims reputational harm in their home state, and you find yourself defending a distant lawsuit.[2] Current doctrine governing personal jurisdiction based on internet speech allows courts to treat viral reach as proof you “aimed” your speech at the forum. But virality is not intent. When courts apply the Calder v. Jones “effects test”[3] as if a large online audience, a handful of followers, or tagging another account in a state equals purposeful targeting, they risk transforming the minimum-contacts standard into a content-based consequence for speech.

That risk is no longer hypothetical. In the age of social media, anyone—journalists, activists, ordinary users—can reach a national audience without trying. The very features that make platforms like X, Facebook, or TikTok powerful tools for public discourse—instant sharing, algorithmic amplification, and audience unpredictability—make it impossible for speakers to control where their speech lands or to comprehend its legal consequences. Yet Calder’s 1984 framework, designed for a world of print tabloids, has been stretched to fit a digital world. The result is a doctrinal mismatch: Courts apply the effects test as the Court intended, divorced from constitutional speech values, and in doing so, they chill the very discourse the First Amendment is meant to protect.[4]

Personal jurisdiction doctrine was designed, in large part, to prevent unfairness to defendants.[5] General jurisdiction permits suit where a defendant is “at home,” while specific jurisdiction allows suit only when a nonresident defendant’s contacts with the forum give rise to the claim.[6] Thus, once a court exercises jurisdiction over a nonresident defendant under a state’s long-arm statute,[7] such an exercise is constrained by due process,[8] ensuring jurisdiction comports with “fair play and substantial justice.” [9] Calder v. Jones adapted the minimum-contacts inquiry for intentional torts, asking whether the defendant expressly aimed their conduct at the forum and knew harm would be felt there.[10]

Calder also rejected the idea that First Amendment concerns should factor into the jurisdictional analysis, and courts since have largely maintained that divide.[11] In the social media age—where speech is borderless and virality often accidental—this Note argues that divorce has become untenable.

Civil actions arising from online speech highlight this tension.[12] Unlike most torts, the place of the conduct and the place of injury often diverge. A speaker may address a national audience, but the plaintiff’s harm can be felt anywhere, because a single post is accessible everywhere.[13] Previous scholarship has noted that without careful limits, Calder’s effects test enables forum shopping[14] and chills lawful expression.[15] The threat of being haled into a distant court—made worse when the jurisdictional basis is unpredictable and speakers cannot anticipate which courts may assert authority—creates a classic First Amendment “chilling effect,” discouraging robust debate on matters of public concern.[16] When posting a tweet carries the risk of ruinous litigation anywhere it is read, speakers are likely to self-censor. The “uninhibited, robust, and wide-open” debate envisioned by the Court in New York Times v. Sullivan becomes illusory.[17]

This Note argues that courts adjudicating civil actions based on online speech must integrate First Amendment values into the personal-jurisdiction inquiry. Because social media allows anyone’s speech to go viral unpredictably, due process fairness cannot be assessed without taking account of the chilling effect on lawful expression. Due process already asks whether haling a nonresident defendant into a forum is fair;[18] in the context of speech, fairness includes guarding against the chilling of lawful expression. Furthermore, current approaches to personal jurisdiction over nonresident defendants effectively adjudicate content as the basis for contacts. By making jurisdiction turn on the substance of speech, the doctrine imposes a content-based consequence without affording a corresponding First Amendment safeguard.

This Note proceeds as follows. Part I traces the evolution of personal jurisdiction doctrine: It begins with the due process foundations of “minimum contacts,” then examines Keeton’s plaintiff-friendly turn, Calder’s creation of the “effects” test, and Walden v. Fiore’s acknowledgment of the test’s unworkability in practice. This Part also explains how and why First Amendment considerations became untethered from jurisdictional analysis.

Part II turns to the burdens of litigation itself, arguing that procedure can operate as suppression. It addresses the “chilling effect” doctrine and examines how legislatures and courts have already recognized the need for early procedural protections for speech—most notably through state anti-SLAPP statutes and Section 230 immunity. These developments demonstrate that speech-based causes of action require heightened safeguards against abusive or overbroad litigation.

Part III examines the jurisdictional challenges posed by online speech, where communication transcends borders and virality may be unintended. It surveys the different approaches lower courts have developed to reconcile Calder, Keeton, and Walden in the context of the internet. Part III.A addresses the “audience-targeting” approach, under which courts ask whether a defendant intended to reach or impact readers in the forum. Part III.B turns to the “content-based” approach, where courts treat the words of the speech itself—particularly tags, mentions, or geographic identifiers—as jurisdictional contacts. Recent decisions, such as the Sixth Circuit’s contrasting rulings in Blessing v. Chandrasekhar[19] and Johnson v. Griffin,[20] illustrate the problems with the content-based approach. This Part argues that both approaches, and especially the content-based test, risk collapsing the jurisdictional inquiry into an assessment of speech itself, without adequate regard for the First Amendment value of online expression and the unpredictability of viral communication.

Part IV proposes a framework for folding First Amendment concerns back into the jurisdictional analysis. It argues that online speech requires a rethinking of what constitutes an intentional contact with a forum, especially when courts treat the content itself as a jurisdiction-determinative contact, and that First Amendment considerations should function as a constitutional bulwark against expansive long-arm statutes when speech is the contact with the forum state. This Section outlines how courts can adopt an approach that considers both due process fairness and the chilling effect on speech.

The Note concludes by contending that because modern social media personal jurisdiction doctrine operates as a content-based consequence for speech, it must incorporate First Amendment values if it is to remain faithful to its fairness principles.

I. Minimum Contacts, Maximum Consequences for Speech

As cases from International Shoe onward demonstrate, when considering personal jurisdiction, the primary focus is on a nonresident defendant’s connections with the forum state and whether it is reasonable to expect them to litigate there.[21] First Amendment-based defenses to the cause of action typically arise after the determination of jurisdiction; at the merits stage, a defendant can argue that imposing liability would violate their free speech rights. By relegating free speech considerations to the merits stage, the modern doctrine frames jurisdiction as a purely procedural inquiry. This approach overlooks two distinct harms: the direct suppression of speech that occurs when a defendant must actually defend such a lawsuit, and the chilling effect created by the fear of being haled into a distant court. Part II addresses the latter, while this Part emphasizes the former.

Part I.A traces the due process foundations of the “minimum contacts” standard. Part I.B examines Calder v. Jones and its influence on the personal jurisdiction canon. Part I.C critiques the Supreme Court’s refusal to consider First Amendment concerns at the jurisdictional stage in Calder, showing how earlier cases more meaningfully safeguarded free speech within the jurisdictional analysis.

A.   The Role of Due Process in Personal Jurisdiction and Evolution of “Minimum Contacts”

The evolution of personal jurisdiction has its roots in the landmark decision Pennoyer v. Neff.[22] In Pennoyer, the Supreme Court determined that procedural due process requires that a court have authority over the persons and property within its jurisdiction.[23] Personal jurisdiction over a defendant was thus seen as valid only if the defendant was served with process within the state or voluntarily appeared in court; anything else was deemed to violate due process.[24] While much scholarship has traced the evolution of personal jurisdiction doctrine,[25] this Section will be primarily focused on the procedural due process-based fairness values that undergird these decisions,[26] as they are relevant to the arguments made in Parts II and III.

The Pennoyer decision has been foundational for the concept of personal jurisdiction based on territoriality and physical presence.[27] However, the territorial approach set forth in Pennoyer began to change with International Shoe Co. v. Washington, which introduced the “minimum contacts” standard for a court’s jurisdiction over a nonresident defendant.[28] Under this more flexible approach, a court could assert jurisdiction over a nonresident defendant based on the party’s contacts with the state as long as exercising jurisdiction would comport with a “traditional conception of fair play and substantial justice.”[29] This “minimum contacts” standard was introduced, in large part, to ensure that a state’s exercise of jurisdiction over nonresident defendants (which occurs through the application of state long-arm statutes)[30] would be consistent with the constitutional mandate of due process.[31]

After International Shoe, the Court sought to clarify what qualifies as a defendant’s “minimum contacts.”[32] A defendant’s connection to a forum state generally refers to the defendant’s contacts with the state itself, such as physical presence, residence, business operations, or actions that target the forum state.[33] Cases following International Shoe clarified that, as a matter of due process, the specific contacts must be purposeful and such that the defendant should reasonably expect to be sued in that state on matters related to those contacts.[34]

In World-Wide Volkswagen Corp. v. Woodson, the Court underscored the due process foundations[35] of personal jurisdiction, emphasizing that a defendant must purposefully avail itself of the forum, rejecting jurisdiction based solely on the unilateral activity of the plaintiff or other third parties.[36] The minimum contacts inquiry, further refined in World-Wide Volkswagen Corp. v. Woodson, emphasized that the defendant’s conduct and connection with the forum state must be such that they should reasonably anticipate being haled into court there.[37]

In Calder v. Jones, the Court introduced the “effects test,” holding that jurisdiction is proper where a defendant’s intentional acts are aimed at the forum and cause harm there.[38] As discussed further in Part I.B, this analysis emphasized the plaintiff’s experience of injury in determining whether the defendant could reasonably anticipate being haled into the forum’s courts.[39] Calder thus reflected the Court’s willingness to allow jurisdiction based on the foreseeability of harm.[40]

One year later, in Burger King Corp. v. Rudzewicz, the Court recalibrated the inquiry by reaffirming that the touchstone of due process remains the defendant’s purposeful availment of the forum state.[41] The Court emphasized that minimum contacts are not satisfied by the plaintiff’s unilateral activity or mere foreseeability of harm; instead, they require that the defendant deliberately engage with the forum in a way that makes litigation there fair and just.[42] By refocusing on the defendant’s choices, Burger King underscored that due process protects defendants from being subject to jurisdiction based on “fortuitous” or “attenuated” connections.[43]

Yet the boundaries of this principle remained contested. In Asahi Metal Industry Co. v. Superior Court, the Court fractured over whether merely placing goods into the stream of commerce sufficed for jurisdiction.[44] Given the Asahi decision’s plurality nature, the Supreme Court has not established a bright-line stream-of-commerce rule.[45]

The absence of consensus resurfaced in J. McIntyre Machinery, Ltd. v. Nicastro, where the Court again splintered over how to apply due process limits to global commerce.[46] Most recently, Ford Motor Co. v. Montana Eighth Judicial District Court clarified that specific jurisdiction exists when a defendant’s forum contacts “relate to” the plaintiff’s claims, even if those contacts did not directly cause the injury.[47] By expanding the causal inquiry into one of relatedness, the Court reaffirmed that the central due process question is whether the defendant’s forum conduct creates a substantial connection that makes exercising jurisdiction fair.[48]

Taken together, these cases reveal an evolving but continuous due process thread: Jurisdiction must rest on a defendant’s purposeful affiliation with the forum, not merely on a plaintiff’s residence or incidental harm.[49] Foreseeability and “fair warning” are thus core to due process.[50] Burger King reasserted foreseeability and a defendant’s purpose as a core due process safeguard, and Ford’s refinement illustrates that while the Court adapts jurisdictional doctrine to new contexts, it consistently measures fairness through the lens of due process: Defendants must make connections with the forum state such that they can foresee being haled into its courts.[51]

But when a plaintiff sues an out-of-state defendant based on internet activity, courts have noted that foreseeability is complicated.[52] In the context of internet activity, courts typically look for “something more” than just the plaintiff’s residence in the forum state.[53] This consideration of “something more” is consistent with Justice O’Connor’s concurrence in Asahi, which offers that the Due Process Clause requires more than mere awareness of a product’s entry into a stream of commerce for a defendant to be subject to jurisdiction.[54] Courts looking for “something more” examine whether the defendant’s activity was expressly aimed at the forum state and whether the defendant could have foreseen being brought into court there.[55]

Meanwhile, the Court has narrowed general jurisdiction to prevent overreach: Only a small set of “affiliations” will “expose a defendant to . . . sweeping jurisdiction.”[56] In Goodyear Dunlop Tires Operations, S.A. v. Brown, and Daimler AG v. Bauman, the Court held that corporations are subject to general jurisdiction only where they are “at home,” namely their place of incorporation or principal place of business.[57] The evolution of personal jurisdiction jurisprudence underscores the Court’s insistence that jurisdictional rules adapt to modern interstate commerce while safeguarding out-of-state defendants from being haled into forums with which they lack meaningful ties. But when the “contact” is speech itself, as the cases in Part III show, that framework collapses: The very nature of expression resists territorial boundaries, and the promise of fairness at the heart of due process is lost.

B.   Calder and Keeton’s Expansion of Personal Jurisdiction and Impact on Defamation Cases

The 1984 decisions Calder v. Jones[58] and Keeton v. Hustler Magazine, Inc.[59]—decided on the same day—collectively expanded the minimum contacts inquiry through two cases involving media defendants. Both decisions emphasized that significant circulation and sales (as in Keeton) or targeted harmful effects (as in Calder) in a forum state can establish jurisdiction. These decisions marked a shift from a defendant’s mere physical presence in a state to the effects and reach of a defendant’s actions.

Nonetheless, it is important to note what the Court did not do in these cases. In Keeton, the relevant contacts were the circulation of Hustler magazines in New Hampshire, and in Calder, the relevant contacts were the reporters’ intentional activities directed at California—including phone calls to sources and the focus on a California plaintiff—not the circulation of the allegedly defamatory article itself.[60] In neither case did the Court treat the speech content itself as the jurisdictional contact.[61] Thus, the framework established in Calder and Keeton demonstrates that jurisdiction was anchored in distribution and intentional forum-directed conduct, not in speech itself. Viewed this way, the Court’s decision in Calder to separate the First Amendment question from the personal jurisdiction analysis can be understood as consistent with its focus on conduct rather than content.

The following Section examines how Calder, Keeton, and Walden reshaped the minimum contacts framework for defamation cases and what those decisions suggest about the boundaries between jurisdiction and First Amendment protections.[62]

1.   Keeton v. Hustler Magazine: Personal Jurisdiction’s Plaintiff-Friendly Turn

In Keeton, the plaintiff, Kathy Keeton (a New York resident) sued Hustler Magazine (based in Ohio) for libel in federal court in New Hampshire, choosing this forum for the state’s lengthy statute of limitations.[63] The Court held that Hustler’s monthly circulation of ten to fifteen thousand magazines in New Hampshire was sufficient to establish personal jurisdiction over the publication, writing that “Hustler Magazine, Inc., ha[d] continuously and deliberately exploited the New Hampshire market . . . [and] must reasonably anticipate being haled into court there in a libel action based on the contents of its magazine.”[64] The Court explained that while a plaintiff’s residence can be relevant and may strengthen the jurisdictional analysis, it is not dispositive; jurisdiction may still be proper based on the defendant’s own contacts even if the plaintiff does not reside in the forum.[65]

The Court first addressed the scope of liability in multistate defamation cases through the “single publication rule,” a doctrine developed to prevent multiple suits arising from the same defamatory statement appearing in different jurisdictions.[66] Against this backdrop, the Court rejected the First Circuit’s assertion that “the New Hampshire tail is too small to wag so large an out-of-state dog.”[67] Instead, it reasoned that Hustler should have anticipated liability in any forum where its magazine was distributed: “[Hustler] must anticipate that such a suit will seek nationwide damages . . . . There is no unfairness in calling respondent to answer for the contents of its national publication wherever a substantial number of copies are regularly sold and distributed.”[68]

The Court’s decision in Keeton marked a turn toward a plaintiff-friendly approach by creating a jurisdiction-based permission structure for libel suits in forums where the plaintiff did not reside. In doing so, the Court acknowledged that the plaintiff’s chosen forum was not necessarily where the reputational harm was most acutely felt, since the plaintiff lived elsewhere.[69] This opened the door for plaintiffs to engage in a form of forum shopping, selecting jurisdictions strategically even when they were not the center of the alleged injury. Still, the Court held that a libel plaintiff, like any other tort plaintiff, may sue only in a forum where the defendant maintains “certain minimum contacts . . . such that the maintenance of the suit does not offend ‘traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice.’”[70] In applying Keeton, lower courts have drawn distinctions between traditional print circulation and internet publication, reasoning that distributing physical copies into a forum reflects a more deliberate market entry than the universal accessibility of a website.[71] These distinctions matter, particularly in the digital age, but they do not cure the deeper problem: Keeton itself remains troubling. Even as it invoked the language of due process and fairness, its reasoning stretched jurisdiction in ways that are internally inconsistent, expanding the threat of liability while purporting to safeguard defendants.[72]

By endorsing jurisdiction in a state where the plaintiff did not reside, Keeton effectively paved the way for Calder’s recognition of jurisdiction in the plaintiff’s home state, making that outcome a “foregone conclusion.”[73]

2.   Calder v. Jones and the “Effects” Test

In Calder v. Jones, the Supreme Court articulated the “effects test” for intentional torts, holding that personal jurisdiction may rest on the place where the harm of the defendant’s conduct is felt.[74] The case arose from a defamation suit that California-based actress Shirley Jones filed in California Superior Court against the National Enquirer, a Florida-based publication.[75] Jones alleged claims of libel, invasion of privacy, and intentional infliction of emotional harm resulting from an allegedly libelous story published by the Enquirer.[76] In assessing personal jurisdiction, the Court did not emphasize the Enquirer’s nationwide circulation but rather the fact that the alleged harm was directed at, and felt by, Jones in California.[77]

The Court developed the following test: A defendant has purposefully directed conduct at the forum state if they (1) commit an intentional act, (2) expressly aimed at the forum state, that (3) causes harm the defendant knew was likely to be suffered in the forum state.[78] This test has become a fixture of modern personal jurisdiction jurisprudence involving intentional torts.

In cases where the defendant’s speech is the only connection to the forum state because the speech was accessible in the forum state, that distinction is complicated. Effects-test cases, by their very nature, often involve speech designed to have a specific effect on the listener or reader. Public knowledge of a person’s behavior may lead to loss of employment, or a news investigation may lead to legal consequences. As both online commerce and communication continue to grow, so, too, do cases that apply the Calder “effects test.”[79] One scholar observed a three-fold increase of “effects test” cases filed in federal courts between 2000 and 2010, noting that these “disputes . . . cross state or national boundaries, even when the individuals involved remain at home.”[80] As the cases discussed in Part III demonstrate, this trend has likely only increased due to the ubiquity of social media and online interaction that has characterized the last decade.[81]

Calder further muddied an already “imprecise inquiry” into personal jurisdiction. As courts have recognized, “[t]raditional concepts like ‘purposeful availment’ and ‘foreseeability’ do not always work well when applied to intentional conduct outside a state that causes injury within a state,”[82] leaving lower courts to struggle with the effects test both across substantive areas and in speech-related suits. While the Court deemed a circulation of ten to fifteen thousand magazines sufficient to establish contacts,[83] it left unresolved the critical question: When is circulation too trivial to support jurisdiction? Some courts have attempted to grapple with this question. For example, in Fielding v. Hubert Burda Media, Inc., the Fifth Circuit concluded that a foreign magazine’s circulation of only seventy copies per week in the forum state was insufficient to establish jurisdiction.[84]

3.   Walden v. Fiore and the Unworkability of the Calder “Effects” Test

In Walden v. Fiore, decided thirty years after Calder, the Court clarified what justified California’s exercise of personal jurisdiction over the defendants in Calder: the libel’s reputational damage in California, not merely the plaintiff’s residency there. In Walden, the Court considered the question of personal jurisdiction in a case involving a law enforcement officer who confiscated cash from two professional gamblers at an airport in Atlanta.[85] The plaintiff gamblers sued Walden in Nevada. The Court held that Nevada courts could not exercise jurisdiction over Walden because his activities in Georgia—seizing the cash—had no connection to Nevada, despite the effects being felt by residents there. For jurisdiction to be proper, the defendant’s conduct needed to be sufficiently connected to the forum for the defendant to reasonably anticipate being haled into court there.[86] The Court emphasized that jurisdiction requires a relationship between the defendant, the forum, and the litigation.[87] This focus on the forum, while an extension of Calder’s emphasis on harm occurring in California, is distinct from the idea that a forum is “harmed” if a citizen of that forum suffers harm.

The Court’s decision in Walden underscored the significance of the defendants’ actions leading to reputational “effects” in the relevant jurisdiction. The Court shifted the emphasis from the location of the plaintiff’s harm to the defendant’s intentional contacts with the forum, expressly rejecting the Calder notion that effects could be determined by a plaintiff’s state of residence.”[88]

In Janus v. Freeman, the Ninth Circuit agreed that Calder’s focus on effects was overbroad in the speech context. Citing Calder, the court contended that allowing defamatory content “knowingly directed at a forum resident” to satisfy the minimum contacts test “overstate[s] the holding of Calder, as clarified by the subsequent decision in Walden v. Fiore.”[89] Janus (a California resident) brought a defamation and copyright infringement suit against Freeman (a Texas resident) in the Central District of California, alleging that “after Freeman’s wife moved to California and began working for, and dating, Janus, Freeman undertook a campaign of harassment that included defamatory comments and unauthorized use of copyrighted photographs.”[90] Janus argued it was sufficient that he was a resident of California and Freeman had contacted employees of his California-based company over Facebook Messenger.[91] Referring to the Walden standard as “correct,” the Ninth Circuit concluded that Janus “failed to establish a prima facie case of purposeful direction as to Freeman’s alleged defamatory activities.”[92]

The Ninth Circuit concluded that Janus’s evidence of “reputation-based effects” in California was “essentially nonexistent.”[93] The court held that reputation-based effects of defamatory statements could not be shown merely because those statements were made to Californians.[94] This showing stood “in sharp contrast to Calder, in which the defendants ‘caused reputational injury in California by writing an allegedly libelous article that was widely circulated in the State’ and in which ‘the brunt’ of that injury was suffered by the plaintiff in that State.”[95] In determining jurisdiction, the court relied on the scope of the speech that occurred: “Janus relie[d] on only a handful of communications that Freeman made to (at most) a few Californians, and there is no evidence or even an allegation that these communications had reputation-based effects of the sort that would be sufficient to warrant haling Freeman into a California court.”[96]

The danger with applying Janus to a broader set of internet defamation actions is that the Ninth Circuit’s conclusion seems to rest on the magnitude of reputational harm Janus faced. One might imagine a different holding had the magnitude of the speech—as measured by the circulation of the posts—been greater. Herein lies the danger of applying uniform jurisdictional rules to speakers with varyingly popular platforms: One might imagine a world where a speaker with a larger reach or speaking on a platform with a larger user base is more likely to face liability for less injurious speech than a speaker with a narrower reach who engages in more injurious speech.

Returning to due process fairness concerns, the Walden approach of personal jurisdiction is far more appropriate in the context of internet speech than is the Calder view. Although Janus attempts to navigate the foreseeability of reputational effects that may be experienced by a plaintiff in the forum, its focus on the number of people reached by defamatory content is hard to apply in practice and is potentially frustrating from a First Amendment standpoint.

Calder and Keeton shifted defamation jurisdiction toward the effects of speech, prioritizing plaintiffs’ harms over fairness to defendants. In today’s landscape, where the internet makes everyone a publisher and every publication potentially global, that framework imposes an impossible burden: anticipating liability in every jurisdiction where words might be read. Such a regime is not only unworkable but also at odds with the Court’s core commitment to fairness in personal jurisdiction.

C.   How the First Amendment Became Untethered to the Jurisdictional Analysis

This Section traces the Calder and Keeton Court’s decision to remove First Amendment concerns from the jurisdictional question.[97] It provides insight into the Court’s rationale and a survey of the landscape prior to Calder. Despite Calder’s decision to divorce the First Amendment question from the jurisdictional inquiry, the legitimate chilling effects anticipated by pre-Calder jurisprudence remain relevant in the social media age. The pre-Calder line of cases discussed in this Section primarily concern “traditional media” defendants.[98] Nonetheless, the reasoning is relevant as applied to social and digital media.

In Calder, the Supreme Court reversed a California state court decision that had held libel claims required a more stringent showing of contacts to satisfy due process than other tort claims.”[99] Such an approach was consistent with jurisprudence from the pre-Calder period, which suggested procedural modifications to defamation law in recognition that defamation actions in themselves were an attempt at chilling publication, despite denying additional protections for the press.[100] One line of cases during the 1970s, for example, “urg[ed] that summary judgment be liberally granted in defamation cases.”[101] One such case, Bon Air Hotel, Inc. v. Time, Inc., recognized the importance of prompt procedural resolution of defamation cases, reasoning that summary judgment was the “proper vehicle for affording constitutional protection” to First Amendment speech on matters of public concern.[102] Another decision, Thompson v. Evening Star Newspaper Co., affirmed the grant of summary judgment in a $42 million libel suit, recognizing the consequences of such an action on a publication.[103]

Jurisprudence and legal scholarship from this period were also especially concerned with the unfairness that distant litigation would pose to nonresident media defendants.[104] Some scholars argued, for example, that “[a]ttempts to assert jurisdiction over non-resident publishers in actions growing out of the distribution of their material within the forum raise significant constitutional questions under the due process clause of the [F]ourteenth [A]mendment.”[105] Judicial opinions that adopted this view held that “First Amendment considerations surrounding the law of libel require a greater showing of contact to satisfy the due process clause than is necessary in asserting jurisdiction over other types of tortious activity.”[106]

Courts similarly recognized the impact that broad exercise of personal jurisdiction could have on the national dissemination of news. The Fifth Circuit, considering the First Amendment implications of personal jurisdiction, explained that “[w]hen dealing with a newspaper, it is reasonable to assume that, due to the lack of substantial revenues derived from sales in distant forums, a strong possibility of lawsuits will have a chilling effect upon the desire of the paper to promote the distribution of publications expressing views unpopular in such forums.”[107] Similarly, in 1979, the Northern District of Illinois district court dismissed a complaint by an Illinois resident against a Georgia-based newspaper “of general circulation” for lack of personal jurisdiction.[108] It reasoned: “The potential chilling effect on the exercise of First Amendment press freedoms that would result from requiring newspaper publishers to defend libel suits in every distant forum where a negligible number of copies of their newspapers are circulated constitutionally precludes the exercise of jurisdiction.”[109]

In deciding Calder, the Supreme Court squarely removed the First Amendment from the jurisdictional analysis:

We also reject the suggestion that First Amendment concerns enter into the jurisdictional analysis. The infusion of such considerations would needlessly complicate an already imprecise inquiry. . . . Moreover, the potential chill on protected First Amendment activity stemming from libel and defamation actions is already taken into account in the constitutional limitations on the substantive law governing such suits. . . . To reintroduce those concerns at the jurisdictional stage would be a form of double counting. We have already declined in other contexts to grant special procedural protections to defendants in libel and defamation actions in addition to the constitutional protections embodied in the substantive laws.[110]

In Calder, the Court declined to “double count[]” First Amendment considerations, reasoning that free speech protections should be addressed at the merits stage rather than at the threshold inquiry into jurisdiction.[111] Building on that logic, the Court in Keeton similarly dismissed any role for the First Amendment at the jurisdictional stage, remarking in a footnote that “invisible radiations from the First Amendment may [not] defeat jurisdiction otherwise proper under the Due Process Clause.”[112] By cabining speech protections to the merits, both decisions reflected an effort to preserve a sharp line between jurisdictional doctrine and substantive defenses.

Applying Calder, federal courts have declined to consider First Amendment concerns when evaluating the propriety of jurisdiction over nonresident defendants.[113] Decades later, however, Walden v. Fiore correctly recognized that libel might raise distinct concerns from other intentional torts precisely because of its First Amendment implications.[114] That acknowledgment unsettles the attempt to draw a neat separation in Calder and Keeton, and exposes the difficulty of ignoring speech considerations at the jurisdictional threshold.

If circulation is treated as the decisive contact, as Calder and Keeton suggest, speakers with larger platforms are subjected to far broader exposure than those with smaller ones—a result difficult to square with the First Amendment’s core premise that speech is protected equally, regardless of the speaker’s reach or influence.

II. The Litigation Process Is the Punishment

Legislation and immunity doctrines recognize that the mere process of civil litigation, its burdens and costs, can be debilitating to defendants. This recognition is reflected in immunity doctrines that broadly serve to protect both defendants and serve larger policy goals.[115]

This Part argues that the values that protect speech on platforms should also protect speakers that engage on social media platforms. The fundamental rights protected by the First Amendment demand protection at every stage of litigation, including the jurisdictional stage. When the content and nature of the speech is closely tied to the jurisdictional consideration, as the cases discussed in Part III demonstrate, it is especially critical to consider First Amendment concerns early on. Doing so will prevent chilling effects on speech and ensure that fundamental rights are central to the consideration of a case from the outset. Ignoring the chilling effect that protracted jurisdictional disputes might have on speech and expression is antithetical to the robust protection that courts have historically afforded expression.

This Part then discusses anti-SLAPP legislation and Section 230 to demonstrate two points. First, legislatures have long recognized the fact that the process of litigation itself can chill speech. It would accordingly not be out of character for courts to consider constitutional values of speech when determining personal jurisdiction over a defendant. Second, anti-SLAPP statutes and Section 230 provide evidence that defendants in speech-related cases require greater procedural protection early in litigation.

A.   Procedure as Suppression: Reassessing the “Chilling Effect” on Speech

This Section examines the “chilling effects” doctrine as it relates to procedural protections for speech, a concern that has become especially salient in the age of social media. The Supreme Court has long recognized that overbroad regulation can deter the exercise of First Amendment rights.[116] As the Court has explained, it has “molded both substantive rights and procedural remedies in the face of varied conflicting interests to conform to our overriding duty to insulate all individuals from the ‘chilling effect’ upon exercise of First Amendment freedoms generated by vagueness, overbreadth and unbridled discretion to limit their exercise.”[117] The risk of chilling speech first appeared in the Court’s jurisprudence in Justice Frankfurter’s 1952 concurrence in Wieman v. Updegraff, a case involving Oklahoma’s Cold War–era loyalty oath for public employees.[118] Since then, the Court has repeatedly invoked chilling effects to justify heightened protections for speech, even extending the First Amendment to some advocacy of unlawful conduct.[119] Today, the doctrine stands for the principle that prohibitions on unprotected activity may nonetheless impermissibly chill constitutionally protected expression.

During the mid-century, the Court’s recognition of the chilling effects doctrine resonated “most clearly in decisions chiefly concerned with the procedural aspects of free speech adjudication.”[120] Fundamental to the expansion of this doctrine during the Cold War era was the judiciary’s recognition “that all litigation, and indeed the entire legal process, is surrounded by uncertainty.”[121] Therefore, “the chilling effect doctrine recognizes the fact that the legal system is imperfect and mandates the formulation of legal rules that reflect our preference for errors made in favor of free speech.”[122] Although the chilling effect doctrine most commonly concerns cases in which a piece of legislation creates vague or overbroad impositions on substantive speech rights, this Note argues it is just as applicable to procedural standards and outcomes that result in self-censorship for fear of regulation.

As noted supra, the Court in Calder offers little reasoning for its decision to divorce First Amendment concerns from the jurisdictional inquiry, beyond that “the potential chill on protected First Amendment activity stemming from libel and defamation actions is already taken into account in the constitutional limitations on the substantive law governing such suits.”[123] It has been argued that New York Times v. Sullivan’s[124] actual malice requirement already accounts for the chilling effect on publication.[125] Decisions such as Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc.,[126] holding state libel laws imposing liability without fault to be violative of the First Amendment, further underscore the First Amendment concerns inherent in defamation actions. The Calder Court expressed a reluctance to “double count” the First Amendment,[127] but merits, on some level, often lurk behind the jurisdictional determination. “While constitutional limitations on speech torts account for the chilling effect of imposing liability, they do nothing to account for the chilling effect of imposing litigation.”[128] In essence, the fear of double counting speech has led courts to “under-count[]” the First Amendment.[129]

The protection of speech rights in substantive defamation law comes into the picture only once courts are deciding the case on the merits, not at the jurisdictional stage. Moreover, although the substantive defenses like the “actual malice” standard established in cases like New York Times v. Sullivan aim to shield free speech by raising the threshold for defamation claims, these protections do not inherently address the preliminary burdens of facing litigation in possibly unfavorable jurisdictions. The values protected in New York Times v. Sullivan impact procedure but are not themselves inherently procedural. Finally, it bears mentioning that the protection of New York Times v. Sullivan can no longer be considered a foregone conclusion, as two members of the current Supreme Court, Justices Thomas and Gorsuch, have called the decision into question.[130] In 2023, the Supreme Court denied certiorari to Blankenship v. NBCUniversal, LLC,[131] which sought to repeal New York Times v. Sullivan, but the future of the precedent hangs by a thread.[132]

If New York Times v. Sullivan is overturned, it would not only affect defamation law but also complicate jurisdictional issues. It could lower the threshold for public figures to claim defamation, potentially leading to an increase in defamation suits and making it easier for plaintiffs to succeed in their claims without the rigorous proof of actual malice. Jurisdictions that are perceived to be more favorable to defamation plaintiffs could see an influx of cases, as plaintiffs shop for venues that would grant them a higher chance of success.

The concerns that broad jurisdiction would result in chilling of speech and publication are even more acute in the context of the internet. Although certainly, the general chaos of unmoderated online forums cannot be overemphasized—there is a very real danger that a broad, near-universal exercise of jurisdiction could not only stifle legitimate public discourse, but also, change a speaker’s liability based on the serendipity of a plaintiff’s domicile.

The global reach of social media platforms like X (formerly Twitter[133]), TikTok, Instagram, and others, which allow statements to be published instantly worldwide, complicates traditional jurisdictional boundaries. In 2023, Pew Research found that 78 percent of U.S.-based eighteen- to twenty-nine-year-olds say they use Instagram, and a third of U.S. adults report using TikTok.[134] The fact remains that the “vast democratic forums of the [i]nternet” have allowed “any person with [an internet connection] [to] become a town crier with a voice that resonates farther than it could from any soapbox.”[135] The fear of being haled into a distant court for online comments could deter individuals from engaging in legitimate public discourse, undermining the First Amendment’s protection of free expression.

Despite the proliferation of new social media and the amplification of certain speech that occurs when posts are filtered through algorithms, courts have typically considered online speech to be akin to offline speech. Thus, the Supreme Court has said, “[W]hatever the challenges of applying the First Amendment to ever-advancing technology, ‘the basic principles of freedom of speech . . . do not vary’ when a new and different medium for communication appears.”[136] Indeed, the Court considers online speech to be akin to offline speech: “[Precedents] provide no basis for qualifying the level of First Amendment scrutiny that should be applied to [the internet.]”[137] That said, the fear of chilling otherwise lawful speech weighs heavily on First Amendment jurisprudence. Although substantive First Amendment defenses to defamation do consider the chilling effects that come with imposing liability, these limits do not address the chilling effects associated with the litigation process.[138]

B.   Anti-SLAPP Legislation and Section 230 as Procedural Protections for Speech

Particularly relevant to the procedural dimension of speech-based tort liability are state anti-SLAPP laws and Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, 47 U.S.C. § 230. Both reflect a shared policy goal of shielding speakers and intermediaries from litigation when certain conditions are met, whether those limits arise from constitutional imperatives or legislative judgment.[139] The principles underlying each serve to dismiss unwarranted or unduly burdensome lawsuits early in the process, thereby preventing strategic litigation where the process itself can be used as a weapon to punish[140] or silence.[141]

This Section discusses anti-SLAPP protections in some depth and then turns briefly to Section 230, not to equate them, but to show how both reflect an existing legal tradition of giving due weight to the chilling effect of process—and why similar considerations are relevant to personal jurisdiction.

1.   Anti-SLAPP Legislation

The following discussion of anti-SLAPP legislation serves two purposes: First, anti-SLAPP laws represent a widespread recognition that lawsuits are sometimes filed not to vindicate a legal right but to intimidate, burden, and deter critics;[142] and second, to answer the objection that speech interests are already accounted for through other procedural avenues and need not factor into jurisdiction. The uneven and often inadequate protection anti-SLAPP laws provide underscores this Note’s broader argument: the need for courts to consider speech concerns at the threshold jurisdictional stage.

Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation—“SLAPP” suits—are civil suits filed with the aim of chilling the defendant’s speech through the cost and stress of litigation.[143] Anti-SLAPP laws emerged in the United States as a response to the rise of such suits, which have targeted not only the press but a wide array of speakers.[144] Historically, for example, landlords have sued tenants who reported safety violations, businesses have pursued customers for posting negative reviews, and public officials have filed actions against vocal critics.[145] The defining feature of a SLAPP suit is the use of legal process to suppress speech.[146] States that pass anti-SLAPP statutes recognize that “[b]ecause of the motives behind the SLAPP action, the usual judicial safeguards were seen as inadequate because they focused on preventing a meritless claim from prevailing.”[147]

California was among the first states to adopt an anti-SLAPP statute, passing the Lockyer Bill in 1993 to provide for expedited dismissal of meritless suits targeting speech on public issues.[148] It was designed to quickly end unwarranted litigation aiming to chill legitimate exercise of First Amendment rights.[149] Since then, over thirty-two states and the District of Columbia have enacted similar laws.[150]

Anti-SLAPP laws enable defendants to dismiss frivolous or strategic lawsuits early in the legal process and acknowledge the asymmetry of power that can manifest in legal disputes.[151] Typically, a defendant may file a “special motion to strike” soon after being served, shifting the burden to the plaintiff to demonstrate a probability of prevailing on the merits. Once such a motion is filed, discovery is often stayed to prevent costly and invasive fishing expeditions. If the defendant prevails, most statutes authorize mandatory or discretionary fee-shifting, allowing recovery of attorney’s fees and costs.[152]

Yet the protections anti-SLAPP statutes offer are profoundly uneven and inconsistent. Some states, such as Massachusetts, narrowly confine their protections “to the right to petition the government under the U.S. and Massachusetts constitutions,”[153] offering little recourse to defendants whose speech addresses broader matters of public concern.[154] Others, like California, have adopted far more robust laws that shield a wide range of expressive activity connected to public issues and provide mandatory fee-shifting.[155]

In the absence of a federal anti-SLAPP statute, the federal courts are deeply divided over whether state anti-SLAPP laws apply in diversity cases. This leaves defendants in federal court particularly vulnerable: The same meritless defamation suit that could be swiftly dismissed with fee recovery in a state court might drag on for years, with full discovery and crushing legal expenses, if filed in federal court across the street.[156]

The resulting patchwork is not a minor inconvenience; it is a systemic inequity.[157] Whether a speaker can invoke early dismissal and attorney-fee provisions often turns entirely on the happenstance of where the plaintiff chooses to file, rather than on any principled distinction in the underlying speech.[158] For many defendants—especially ordinary individuals lacking institutional backing—the asymmetry and burdens of litigation persist unabated. The high cost of defending even a frivolous suit continues to chill speech, and plaintiffs can forum shop to exploit weak or nonexistent protections.[159] This variability underscores why speakers and publishers cannot rely on anti-SLAPP statutes alone as an adequate procedural safeguard for expressive freedom. Without a consistent, constitutional backstop at the jurisdictional stage, the promise of robust public discourse remains easily undermined by strategic litigation tactics.

2.   Section 230

Any discussion of the procedural protections offered to online speech merits mention of the Communications Decency Act, 47 U.S.C. § 230 (Section 230). The core aim of Section 230 was to encourage the growth of the nascent internet by protecting platforms from being held liable as publishers of third-party content.[160] Section 230 generally immunizes “providers or users of interactive computer services” from liability for information created by others.[161] That immunity allows platforms to host vast quantities of user-generated content without constantly facing lawsuits over what their users say.[162]

While Section 230 serves a distinct purpose from the First Amendment, it reflects the same concern animating anti-SLAPP statutes: that the threat of litigation, even apart from liability, can chill online discourse. Without such protections, platforms might over-censor user speech or shut down interactive forums entirely. Section 230 represents a recognition of the special considerations needed to protect online speech.[163]

Two points about Section 230 are significant. First, its immunity extends only to intermediaries, not to individual speakers; users who post allegedly defamatory content can and do get sued. Second, like anti-SLAPP statutes, its protections are not universal. Section 230 does not apply to all claims and has been narrowed in some contexts. It is not a panacea. Rather, it is another example of how lawmakers have recognized that the costs of litigation threaten speech, especially online.[164]

Neither anti-SLAPP laws nor Section 230, standing alone, fully protect speakers. Anti-SLAPP coverage is inconsistent and often unavailable in federal court. Section 230 protects platforms but not individual speakers.[165] These gaps illustrate why First Amendment values should inform personal jurisdiction analysis. Courts and legislatures have already recognized, through anti-SLAPP and Section 230, that procedural safeguards are necessary to prevent litigation itself from chilling expression. Extending that recognition to the jurisdictional stage—where the burdens of defending a suit in a distant forum are first imposed—would be consistent with this broader tradition. These shortcomings are reflected in the cases discussed in Part III and set up the solution offered in Part IV.

III. From Targeting to Tagging: The Evolution of Jurisdiction in Online Speech Cases

Online speech frustrates traditional principles of both territoriality and contacts because it is difficult to determine when speech is directed at a particular place. This difficulty is amplified in the context of the internet and, more recently, by speech generated by social media users. For over two decades, courts and scholars have grappled with how to apply International Shoe’s “minimum contacts” to cross-state online interactions.[166] The stakes of properly characterizing contacts in internet speech cases are high: “Incorrect characterization of [i]nternet-based contacts threatens a collision between personal jurisdiction and the First Amendment that will destroy the unique platform of free speech provided by the [i]nternet.”[167] This concern is only exacerbated by the popularity and ubiquity of social media.[168]

Two approaches now dominate online defamation jurisdiction. First is an audience-targeting approach—derived from the Fourth Circuit’s decision in Young v. New Haven Advocate—that asks whether the speaker aimed the online communication at the forum’s readers or institutions.[169] As noted in other scholarship, “Courts in the First, Third, Eighth, and Ninth Circuits have used similar audience-focused tests . . . . At least one lower court in the Third Circuit has specifically approved Young.”[170] The Eighth Circuit’s “uniquely or expressly aiming” requirement operates much like Young by concentrating on where the interested audience is; the First Circuit likewise asks where the author intended the effect to be felt, placing the focus on the intended recipient of the speech.[171]

Second is a content-focused approach that looks to the text itself—who and what it names, what jurisdiction it references, and how it uses platform tools like tags/mentions—to decide whether Calder’s “express aiming” is satisfied.[172] As discussed in greater detail in Part III.B, this approach has gained more traction especially in the Sixth Circuit, while the Fifth Circuit has adopted a flavor of this content-focused test.

This Part proceeds in that order. Part III.A addresses the audience-targeting approach (centered on Young). Part III.B turns to the content-focused approach, showing how courts have treated speech content and tagging as jurisdictional contacts.

Although courts diverge in how they apply Calder and the minimum contacts framework, they have consistently adhered to Calder’s directive to exclude First Amendment considerations from the jurisdictional inquiry. Part III surveys these divergent approaches, tracing how courts variously frame minimum contacts in online speech cases. Part IV then synthesizes the implications: Treating content as contact marks a departure from the Calder–Keeton–Walden[173] model, intensifies First Amendment concerns, and reveals that even the so-called “audience” approach cannot escape reliance on the speech itself. In practice, courts infer targeting by looking to what the speech says—whether through tags, mentions, or references to the forum—so both approaches ultimately collapse back into content analysis.

Of the cases surveyed, Johnson v. Griffin most clearly demonstrates the dangers of treating online expression as jurisdictional conduct. Together, these cases reveal the instability of modern doctrine: Depending on how a court characterizes online speech, jurisdiction may either be denied or compelled.[174] This inconsistency underscores the need to reintegrate First Amendment considerations into jurisdictional analysis.

A.   The “Audience Targeting” Approach: Young v. New Haven Advocate and Its Progeny

One line of lower court cases addressing internet defamation has developed what scholars describe as an “audience targeting” approach to personal jurisdiction. Under this framework, courts deny jurisdiction unless the defendant’s online expression was specifically directed at the forum state’s audience, rather than merely accessible there.[175] The test, derived from the Fourth Circuit’s decision in Young v. New Haven Advocate,[176] draws from Calder v. Jones, which required that the forum be the “focal point” of both the story and the harm, but adapts Calder to the realities of online speech by emphasizing intentionality toward the audience. It also draws from the Fourth Circuit’s earlier decision in ALS Scan, Inc. v. Digital Service Consultants[177]: When specific jurisdiction is based on internet activities, the party’s online actions must be aimed at the state and cause harm giving rise to a claim under its laws.[178]

In Young v. New Haven Advocate,[179] the warden of a Virginia prison brought a defamation action against two Connecticut newspapers whose websites published articles criticizing conditions for Connecticut prisoners housed in Virginia.[180] The Fourth Circuit concluded that Virginia courts lacked jurisdiction. The court reasoned that the defendants’ activity was not purposefully directed at Virginia: Although the articles were accessible online in Virginia, their “focal point” was Connecticut policy and Connecticut prisons.[181] Applying its earlier decision in ALS Scan, Inc. v. Digital Service Consultants, Inc.,[182] the panel emphasized that “something more than posting and accessibility” is needed; the defendant must “manifest an intent to direct [its] website content . . . to a particular state.”[183]

The Eighth Circuit has developed perhaps the most explicit articulation of the audience-targeting requirement.[184] In Johnson v. Arden, Missouri residents sued out-of-state defendants for defamatory posts on a consumer-complaint website.[185] The court rejected jurisdiction, holding that Calder requires speech to be “uniquely or expressly aimed” at the forum.[186] Because the postings were accessible to anyone online and not directed toward Missouri readers in particular, jurisdiction there was improper.[187] Similarly, in Dakota Industries, Inc. v. Dakota Sportswear, Inc.,[188] the court stressed that Calder requires intentional targeting of the forum, not merely incidental reputational effects.[189] District courts in the Eighth Circuit have applied the same principle.[190]

The Fifth Circuit’s approach is difficult to classify. Some cases take a more audience-focused lens, while others deploy a more content-based approach. Early Fifth Circuit internet speech cases leaned more explicitly audience-focused. In Revell v. Lidov,[191] the plaintiff (a Texas resident) sued Lidov (a Harvard professor) and Columbia University, alleging that an online article hosted on Columbia University’s servers defamed him by suggesting he had advance knowledge of the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing in Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988.[192] Although the plaintiff’s reputational harm was felt in Texas, the Fifth Circuit held that jurisdiction there was improper because “Texas was not the focal point of the article or the harm suffered.”[193] The court reasoned that the article contained no references to Texas, relied on no Texas sources, and was not directed at Texas readers any more than readers elsewhere.[194] In effect, Revell confirmed the Young principle: Jurisdiction requires more than the plaintiff’s residence or the accessibility of the speech; it requires intentional audience targeting.

More recently, the Fifth Circuit took a similarly audience-focused approach in Johnson v. TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.[195] In this case, plaintiff Charles Johnson sued HuffPost in federal court in Houston[196] over a 2019 HuffPost article that had called him a “Holocaust denier.”[197] HuffPost, a New York- and Delaware-based corporation that “has no physical ties to Texas,” challenged the court’s exercise of personal jurisdiction.[198] The court agreed. It emphasized that the article contained no Texas-specific content, relied on no Texas sources, and did not target Texas readers.[199] Allowing jurisdiction solely based on nationwide website accessibility, the court warned, would “confer universal jurisdiction in defamation cases,” contrary to due process.[200] Johnson thus illustrates the modern Fifth Circuit’s continued adherence to an audience-focused model.

The Fifth Circuit in Johnson v. TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc. also explicitly rejected an application of Keeton in the internet context, writing that allowing accessibility of a website to be the sole jurisdictional touchstone would allow a forum “unlimited jurisdiction over virtual defendants” in a manner that would be unconstitutional.[201] The court reasoned that an alternative holding would mean that “personal jurisdiction would become ‘universal jurisdiction,’ allowing suit anywhere [the] website is visible.”[202] The court differentiated both Calder and Keeton. Because the story had no connection with Texas—either by soliciting information from Texas-based sources or by targeting the reputational effects to that state—Texas was neither “the focal point both of the [alleged libel] and of the harm suffered.”[203] Keeton, the court wrote, “did not forge an iron law of specific jurisdiction for all publishers in all mediums.”[204] Acknowledging that the inquiry of “personal jurisdiction . . . should not change just because a defendant operates a web publication instead of a physical one,” the court yet maintained that websites are inherently different from print publications.[205] The majority emphasized, “defendants must have ‘fair warning’ that their activities could furnish jurisdiction in the forum,” and “a defendant must have some chance to limit or avoid his exposure to the courts of a particular state.”[206] This reasoning suggests that even when the inquiry is audience-focused, the court did emphasize foreseeability and fairness.

Decisions from state courts and federal district courts demonstrate inconsistencies when applying the audience-focused test. State courts have sometimes reached similar results. In Griffis v. Luban,[207] the Minnesota Supreme Court considered defamation claims arising from statements posted in an online discussion board about an Alabama resident. The court held that Minnesota courts lacked jurisdiction because the postings were not directed toward a Minnesota audience but were instead part of a broader internet conversation.[208] Like Young, the court stressed that Calder requires intentional forum targeting, not just online accessibility or a plaintiff’s residence.[209]

District courts in other circuits have also sometimes applied an audience-based test. For example, in Herbal Brands, Inc. v. Photoplaza, Inc.,[210] the court rejected jurisdiction in Arizona over allegedly defamatory online reviews, noting the absence of any effort to target Arizona consumers.[211] Likewise, in Cityzenith Holdings, Inc. v. Liddell[212] and Brown v. Dash,[213] courts emphasized the absence of specific audience targeting as a reason to deny jurisdiction despite clear reputational harm in the plaintiff’s home state.

The audience-based approach underscores the difficulty of distinguishing between a speaker’s intended target and the broader reach of online speech, where posts may be read far beyond their anticipated audience. One of the criticisms of the Young and audience-focused approach broadly is that it overlooks the internet’s capacity for broad distribution and may create a jurisdictional safe harbor for harmful speech. For example, some scholars have asserted that the decision drew an unfair line between targeting and reach: “The Advocate may not be targeting a Virginia audience, but the [i]nternet allows it to reach a Virginia audience. Thus, while an [i]nternet publisher might not intend to serve a national market, by using the [i]nternet, the publisher is knowingly making its writing accessible to the national market.”[214] The jurisdictional “safe harbor,” in this view, allows tortfeasors to escape liability and is too narrow a construction of Calder.[215] The solution, per this view, is to return to traditional minimum contacts, à la Calder, to account for “genuine” First Amendment concerns through reform of substantive libel laws, and for states to clarify their long-arm statutes to protect their citizens from internet-based defamation.[216] These suggestions, however, do not account for the burden that litigation itself—as discussed in greater detail in Part II of this Note—poses upon online speakers.

In sum, the audience-targeting approach treats Calder’s “express aiming” requirement as a proxy for intentionality toward a forum audience. On its face, this framework appears to emphasize where speech is directed rather than what the speech says. But in practice, audience tests are not divorced from content. Courts end up examining the substance of the publication to determine whether its intended readership lies within the forum—considering headlines, topics, sources, and context.[217]

Thus, even courts that purport to adopt an audience-centered test inevitably evaluate the content of the speech itself. As a result, the audience-targeting approach shades into content analysis, setting up the deeper problem that Part III.B explores: that internet defamation jurisdiction cannot be disentangled from assessments of speech, and that these assessments inevitably raise First Amendment concerns.

B.   The Content-Focused Approach: Speech as Contacts

If Young epitomizes an audience-centered approach to internet jurisdiction, the alternative—and increasingly dominant—approach is content-focused. Rather than asking solely whether a defendant intended to reach an in-forum audience, these courts examine the text of the challenged communication to determine whether the forum itself was the focal point. This approach treats speech features such as tags, mentions, or forum-specific references as jurisdictionally significant.[218] In practice, this means that the more a communication references or invokes the forum, the more likely it is to create jurisdiction there, regardless of whether the author sought out a forum audience.

In doing so, it shifts jurisdictional doctrine away from the Calder model—where circulation and intentional conduct anchored jurisdiction—toward a model in which the speech content itself supplies the jurisdictional hook. This Section discusses decisions from the Fifth and Sixth Circuits, as well as one federal district court, that illustrate the turn towards a content-based approach to personal jurisdiction in online speech cases.

1.   Sixth Circuit: Tagging as a Jurisdictional Hook

The Sixth Circuit has gone further than any other court in identifying tagging as a doctrinal pivot in social media jurisdiction. In recent years, it has moved from an audience-focused approach to an increasingly content-focused one. In Cadle Co. v. Schlichtmann,[219] the court applied an audience-based test, declining jurisdiction over an allegedly defamatory website accessible in Ohio, reasoning that “nothing on the website specifically targeted or [was] even directed at Ohio readers.”[220] The lack of audience focus in the forum was dispositive.

The Sixth Circuit’s decisions in Blessing v. Chandrasekhar[221] and Johnson v. Griffin[222] made clear that the decisive dispositive issue was the defendant’s use of the tag, an @ symbol placed before a social media user’s name, which identifies the user. Together, they show how the same defendant, comedian Kathy Griffin,[223] was treated differently based on whether her speech was broadcast broadly or accompanied by a tag that functioned as a communication into the forum.

In Blessing v. Chandrasekhar, Kentucky high school students sued Griffin and another defendant for tweets posted after the viral 2019 “March for Life” confrontation in Washington, D.C.[224] Videos from the event showed a group of Covington Catholic High School students, many wearing “Make America Great Again” hats, in a confrontation with Native American activist Nathan Phillips.[225] The videos quickly spread on social media, sparking a nationwide controversy.[226]

Griffin weighed in on X, calling on her followers to “[n]ame these kids,” “[s]hame them,” and “let [their school] know how you feel about their students[’] behavior.”[227] Another defendant, Sujana Chandrasekhar, similarly tweeted that the students warranted “shame” and called for “massive re-education.”[228] The plaintiffs, Kentucky residents, alleged defamation and other torts.[229]

The Sixth Circuit affirmed dismissal for lack of personal jurisdiction. The panel held that Griffin and Chandrasekhar had no relevant contacts with Kentucky: They “never traveled to, conducted activities within, contacted anyone in, or sent anything or anyone to” the state.[230] Although the plaintiffs suffered alleged reputational harm in Kentucky, the court stressed that “the plaintiff cannot be the only link between the defendant and the forum.”[231] The court reasoned the tweets were directed at the world at large and commented on events in Washington, D.C., not on Kentucky-based conduct.[232] The court thus concluded that the harm was not “tethered” to Kentucky “in any meaningful way,” but instead was diffuse, experienced wherever the plaintiffs happened to be.[233]

Importantly, the Sixth Circuit, by drawing parallels between the newsgathering activities in Calder and the speech at issue in Blessing, treated speech and content as conduct. In Calder, the Court had determined the defamatory story was expressly “aimed” at California because the defendants relied on California sources, wrote about a California plaintiff, and knew that the reputational injury would be felt in California, where the plaintiff lived and worked.[234] By contrast, in Blessing, the court reasoned Griffin did not engage Kentucky sources, nor did her tweets focus on Kentucky activities.[235]

Two years later, the Sixth Circuit confronted another case involving Griffin’s tweets—but reached the opposite result. This case is the most troubling of those discussed in this Section for its treatment of an @ symbol as purposeful tagging. In Johnson v. Griffin, Tennessee resident Samuel Johnson, then-CEO of VisuWell, was filmed in a confrontation at a Franklin, Tennessee hotel.[236] A teenager in a prom dress and his boyfriend recorded Johnson allegedly making disparaging comments, and the video went viral after circulating on TikTok and X.[237] Griffin posted the video to her followers in a series of tweets that identified Johnson, referenced his Tennessee ties, and tagged his employer. Her first social media post on X read, “If this is Sam Johnson in Nashville, Tennessee, the CEO of @VisuWell, healthcare-tech-growth strategist, married to Jill Johnson where they may reside in Franklin, Tennessee, it seems like he’s dying to be online famous.”[238] Johnson’s employer announced his termination, and Griffin tweeted: “Has [VisuWell] removed him from the Board? If not, the nation will remain vigilant.”[239]

The Johnsons sued Griffin in federal court in Tennessee, alleging tortious interference and related claims.[240] The district court dismissed for lack of jurisdiction, holding that Griffin’s California-based tweets were insufficient contacts with Tennessee.[241] On appeal, however, the Sixth Circuit reversed, holding that Griffin’s conduct created minimum contacts with Tennessee.[242]

The panel emphasized that Griffin’s tweets expressly identified a Tennessee resident, referenced his Tennessee employer, and—critically—tagged @VisuWell, thereby reasoning that the tweet was sent directly to the company.[243] The court analogized tagging to direct communications like phone calls or letters, which courts have recognized as jurisdictionally significant.[244] The court determined that Griffin “directly communicated” with VisuWell in Tennessee, and her conduct was “aimed” at the forum in the way that the tweets in Blessing were not.[245]

The court distinguished Blessing: In Blessing, Griffin did not communicate with any Kentucky entity; her tweets targeted no Kentucky institution.[246] In Johnson, by tagging @VisuWell and following up directly with the company, the court determined Griffin crossed the line from broad commentary to forum-specific communication.[247] The panel emphasized that “[h]ad Griffin done in Blessing what she did here”—namely, tagged the Kentucky school directly—the result would have been different.[248] This reasoning elevates tagging into the jurisdictional equivalent of sending a letter or making a phone call into the forum.[249] In the court’s view, Griffin’s tweets not only broadcasted her message globally but also intentionally “tethered” the harm to Tennessee by demanding action from a Tennessee-based company.[250]

Moreover, invoking Calder to dismiss First Amendment concerns, the court overlooked the key distinction that Calder analyzed publication as distribution, not as speech qua speech.[251] The Sixth Circuit reasoned that “when the same act has two consequences—one creating jurisdiction, the other facilitating speech—the First Amendment has nothing to do with the jurisdictional inquiry.”[252] But this framing misreads Calder; the Court never endorsed speech content itself as jurisdictional conduct. By treating Griffin’s expressive acts as forum-directed “contacts,” the Sixth Circuit imported a content-based restriction into the jurisdictional analysis.[253]

The Sixth Circuit has since explicitly described the distinction between these two cases as hinging on tagging. In Carbone v. Kaal, the court summarized: “In Blessing . . . the defendants did not direct their actions at Kentucky. . . . [I]n Johnson [by contrast], the tweets mentioned Tennessee directly, identified the plaintiff’s Tennessee employer, and allegedly led to the termination of the plaintiff’s employment in Tennessee.”[254]

Together, Blessing and Johnson illustrate how tagging draws a doctrinal line in content-based analyses. When a defendant tags a forum institution, courts treat the post as a direct contact sufficient to confer jurisdiction. When no tag exists, courts reach the opposite result, even where the speech is equally accessible to forum residents. The Sixth Circuit’s articulation of this distinction underscores the instability of the content-based test: Whether jurisdiction exists may turn on the inclusion or omission of a single tag.

2.   Tagging as Targeting: Majumdar v. Fair

District courts outside the Sixth Circuit have also applied the content-focused test to consider tagging as a jurisdictional contact, even when other contacts might be available. In Majumdar v. Fair, the defendant, a professor at Georgetown University, posted a series of blog entries, tweets, and Facebook posts accusing a University of Chicago professor (the plaintiff’s husband) of sexual misconduct and other professional improprieties and accused the plaintiff of obtaining her employment through her affiliation with her (the plaintiff’s) husband.[255] Fair’s online campaign described the plaintiff’s husband as a “sexual predator with permanent job security.”[256] Importantly for the jurisdictional analysis, Fair used the @UChicago Twitter handle when making these accusations. In one prominent tweet, she wrote: “WHEN WILL THE @UChicago DO SOMETHING TO STOP THIS?”[257]

The record in Majumdar suggests that Fair’s conduct was part of a broader online campaign of harassment and reputational attacks across multiple platforms.[258] It is notable that the court’s jurisdictional analysis zeroed in on the tagging of @UChicago rather than the larger course of alleged online bullying, treating the tag itself as the decisive jurisdictional contact.[259] Fair also reached into Illinois through more formal channels: She apparently sent letters and complaints to the University of Chicago’s Title IX office in addition to her online posts.[260] The court, however, emphasized tagging @UChicago as the decisive jurisdictional contact.[261]

The court emphasized that Fair’s use of tagging went beyond publishing to a general audience; tagging the university meant that the tweets did not merely exist in the stream of public discourse but were directly delivered to the institution itself. The court explained that tagging functioned like an intentional communication to Illinois decisionmakers, characterizing it as “the functional equivalent of sending that person a letter.”[262] On this reasoning, the court determined Fair’s social media posts created jurisdictionally relevant contacts with Illinois because they intentionally targeted an Illinois entity, even though the posts were accessible to readers broadly.

The court rejected Fair’s argument that her posts were directed only to the internet at large. It stressed that tagging transformed the nature of the communication: By deliberately alerting the university through its official handle, Fair ensured that the message would reach Illinois.[263] As the court put it, “[T]he tagging was not random or accidental; it was an intentional choice to direct the allegations to an Illinois-based institution.”[264] The court determined that the act of tagging, combined with the substance of the accusations, sufficed to establish minimum contacts under Calder.

Thus, Majumdar illustrates how courts applying the content-based approach have treated tags as decisive indicators of forum targeting. Even though Fair’s posts were globally accessible, what mattered was the inclusion of the @UChicago handle, which linked the speech to Illinois.[265]

3.   The Fifth Circuit’s Content-Based Turn: From Revell to Fielding and Clemens

Like the Sixth Circuit, the Fifth Circuit has turned towards a more content-based approach: The Fifth Circuit has adopted a flavor of a content-based framework, sometimes called the “sources and subjects” test.[266] The test makes content dispositive: Courts ask whether the “subject matter” and “sources relied upon” were in the forum.[267]

As discussed in Part III.A, in Revell v. Lidov, the court approached the jurisdictional question through the lens of audience targeting.[268] Three years later, the court took a different approach in Fielding v. Hubert Burda Media, Inc. In this case, German newspapers published stories about the social lives of a Swiss ambassador and his American wife, a former “Mrs. Texas.”[269] The court rejected jurisdiction because “the clear focus of the articles was the alleged affair . . . and its aftermath, activities which occurred in Germany and Switzerland.”[270] Even though the plaintiff’s reputation was harmed in Texas, the content was not about Texas activities.[271] The court formulated the so-called “sources and subjects” test: A plaintiff must show that “(1) the subject matter of and (2) the sources relied upon for the article were in the forum state.”[272] Because the articles concerned European activities and relied on European sources, Texas courts could not assert jurisdiction.[273] Fielding illustrates the Fifth Circuit’s move toward a content-centered analysis: Unless the text is substantively about the forum and rooted in its sources, jurisdiction will not lie—even if the plaintiff suffers reputational injury at home.[274]

Similarly, in Clemens v. McNamee, the Fifth Circuit rejected jurisdiction over a New York trainer who told investigators that professional baseball player Roger Clemens had used performance-enhancing drugs in New York and Toronto.[275] Clemens argued that because he lived in Texas, reputational harm was felt there.[276] But the court held that “the relevant contacts are the defendant’s contacts with the forum, not the plaintiff’s.”[277] McNamee’s statements “did not concern activity in Texas; nor were they made in Texas or directed to Texas residents.”[278]

Taken together, Fielding and Clemens demonstrate how the Fifth Circuit’s “sources and subjects” test is a version of the content approach. Under this approach, jurisdiction turns on whether the article references the forum as subject or draws on forum sources. Where the forum is not mentioned, jurisdiction is denied. Nonetheless, the court looks to the content of the speech to determine whether the forum is a subject. An opposite outcome under this test is not difficult to contemplate: Had any of the speakers mentioned Texas, the decision may have come out differently.

In conclusion, the content-based test reveals a striking pattern. In Blessing, Griffin avoided jurisdiction because her tweets did not mention Kentucky institutions.[279] In Johnson v. Griffin, jurisdiction attached because she tagged a Tennessee employer.[280] In Majumdar, jurisdiction attached because the defendant tagged @UChicago.[281] The lesson is that under the content-focused approach, jurisdiction may hinge on a handful of words or even a single @ symbol. The doctrinal thread is that courts treat textual references—state names, institutional tags, mentions of residence—as the equivalent of physical contacts. This reduces Calder’s “express aiming” requirement to a matter of drafting: Include a forum tag or name, and jurisdiction follows; omit it, and jurisdiction fails.

IV. Integrating First Amendment Principles into the Jurisdictional Analysis

The content-based turn discussed in Part III sharpens the First Amendment problem. The move toward treating content itself as jurisdictional contact departs from Calder and Keeton. In Calder v. Jones, jurisdiction rested on conduct: The defendants consulted California sources, wrote about California activities, and distributed a tabloid with large California circulation.[282] In Keeton, jurisdiction rested on Hustler’s “regular monthly sales of thousands of magazines” in New Hampshire.[283] Neither case made the defamatory content itself the contact. By contrast, in the modern line of cases, jurisdiction turns on linguistic features of speech—whether the post names the forum, tags a local institution, or references a place.[284]

This Part therefore begins by exploring the difficulties that arise when courts treat the content of online speech itself as a jurisdiction-conferring contact. Such an approach risks collapsing the boundary between substantive regulation of speech and the preliminary threshold inquiry of personal jurisdiction. The danger is particularly acute because the jurisdictional stage lacks any built-in First Amendment safeguard: Once jurisdiction is established, the defendant is compelled to litigate in the forum regardless of whether the ultimate claims would withstand constitutional scrutiny. This dynamic amplifies the chilling effect discussed in Part II, as speakers may self-censor rather than risk being haled into distant courts based solely on the words they use. Part IV.B presses further by considering the need for “something more,” a limiting principle that would prevent courts from relying on content alone as the hook for jurisdiction, thereby preserving both due process values and First Amendment protections.

A.   A First Amendment-Informed Approach to Personal Jurisdiction in Online Speech Cases

The treatment of content as contacts poses three distinct problems. First, it undermines Calder’s separation of jurisdiction and merits: First Amendment defenses are supposed to be addressed later, not at the jurisdictional stage.[285] Second, even the “audience test” is not truly content-neutral, since courts must read the text to infer audience targeting.[286] Third, it creates chilling uncertainty: Speakers cannot predict whether casual references will expose them to distant litigation.

In Calder, as discussed in Part I, the Supreme Court separated jurisdiction from the merits: First Amendment defenses would be addressed at the merits stage, not at the jurisdictional stage. But if jurisdiction itself depends on what the defendant said—whether the words named a forum resident, tagged an employer, or referenced a place—then the very act of expressing certain content exposes the speaker to distant litigation. Jurisdictional exposure becomes content-based, raising constitutional concerns usually reserved for substantive restrictions on speech.

The Sixth Circuit decisions most acutely highlight this tension. A single keystroke—typing “@VisuWell”—determined jurisdiction. If, conversely, Griffin had posted on her personal blog about this incident, still explicitly naming Johnson and his company, VisuWell, but not tagging them as she did on Twitter, the result may have been different. Such a hypothetical suggests that it is the venue of the speech (Twitter, now X) and its specific parlance—and not the purpose of her contacts—that led to jurisdiction.

Moreover, the treatment of online speech as deliberate conduct raises its own set of issues, because identifying or tagging another user on platforms like X does not necessarily reflect a deliberate attempt to reach into a forum state; more often, it is simply a means of referencing or identifying a party. Collapsing this distinction risks sweeping casual online interactions into the jurisdictional net, with troubling implications for speech.

Tagging and mentioning are common social media functions used to engage audiences, draw attention, or contribute to a broader conversation––without necessarily intending to communicate with the tagged subject. If, for example, I were to tweet, “@BerkeleyLaw was a wonderful place to attend school,” it can be assumed that I am trying to communicate with my followers about my experience at the university, rather than communicating with the university directly. Similarly, if I were to share a New York Times article with an accompanying tweet saying, “Horrible, careless reporting from @NYTimes,” it is likely that I intended to communicate about the reporting, and not directly to The New York Times. Crucially, these actions do not necessarily signify an intent to interact with or specifically target the legal boundaries of a forum state. Users might tag a business or individual simply to increase the visibility of a post among followers or to link to related content, rather than directing their activities toward the jurisdiction where the tagged party resides.

Four additional problems arise. First, platform architectures are unstable. Twitter in 2021 is not the same as X in 2025; features appear, disappear, or change functionality overnight. Due process cannot hinge on shifting design decisions by private corporations. Users often do not understand the implications of these features. For example, in one of the first online defamation cases to go to trial, Courtney Love, in a widely publicized defamation trial, testified that she did not understand how Twitter worked when she tagged a lawyer in a tweet.[287] The deeper problem is that the scope of a person’s potential liability turns on their level of fluency with a social media platform’s technical features. A sophisticated user who anticipates how tagging could intersect with civil procedure might calibrate their posts to avoid jurisdiction in a distant forum, while an ordinary user—unaware that typing “@” before an entity’s name could later be treated as a jurisdictional hook—could nonetheless find themselves haled into court across the country. That result is inconsistent with due process values, which are meant to provide clear notice and predictable standards, not to make legal exposure turn on whether one possesses specialized legal knowledge.

Second, even the audience-targeting approach is not content-neutral. As Young illustrates, courts infer “intent to target” by looking at the text of the article or post, whether it references forum institutions, discusses forum-centered conduct, or otherwise signals a local audience.[288] Thus, both approaches require reading the content to decide whether the forum was the “focal point.” The supposed distinction—audience versus content—is therefore overstated; content plays a central role in both.

The audience-based approach is further complicated by virality of online communication. In theory, this approach asks whether speech was “aimed” at a forum audience, as in Young v. New Haven Advocate.[289] In practice, however, virality makes audience and reach indistinguishable. Virality refers to the rapid, unpredictable spread of content across networks, often to audiences far beyond the speaker’s original intention. A post written for a local audience can be retweeted, quoted, and amplified across the country within minutes. Virality shows that an audience-based analysis of contacts is difficult to gauge. Furthermore, courts responding to this dynamic inevitably examine the content of the post to decide whom it was “really” targeting. Thus, even the audience test is content-based in practice.

Third, the reliance on tags and mentions raises administrability concerns. Tagging is a platform affordance, not a letter or phone call. To equate a public “@” to a private fax is to stretch analogies; tags simultaneously notify the addressee and broadcast to the world.[290] Treating them as dispositive contacts risks opening jurisdiction in every state where a company or institution is based, whenever a post tags it. Some courts have resisted this move, holding that tagging is insufficient without more.[291] These cases show that not all courts are willing to equate speech features to jurisdictional conduct.

Finally, the content-focused turn blurs the boundary between due process and First Amendment concerns. Minimum contacts doctrine is meant to ensure “fair play and substantial justice.”[292] But when jurisdiction depends on whether a defendant used certain words or tags, the fairness inquiry cannot be disentangled from the constitutional value of protecting expression. As scholars have noted, the very act of being haled into court—especially in a distant forum—can chill speech as effectively as liability itself.[293] By making content the jurisdictional trigger, courts risk converting the process itself into a tool of suppression. In conclusion, the reliance on technological minutiae produces arbitrary outcomes.

B.   Towards Something More

Against this backdrop, the case for folding First Amendment concerns back into jurisdiction is compelling. Reintroducing First Amendment considerations into the jurisdictional analysis could take the form of an inquiry into whether treating a given “contact” as jurisdiction-conferring would chill speech. The Supreme Court has long recognized that vague or unpredictable legal standards raise serious constitutional problems when they deter speakers from engaging in protected expression.[294] When jurisdiction turns on features like tags, mentions, or the unpredictable reach of virality, speakers cannot reasonably predict where they may be sued. That uncertainty creates the same type of chilling effect condemned in Reno: self-censorship driven not by substantive liability, but by the fear of litigation in a remote or unfamiliar forum.

A First Amendment-informed jurisdictional standard would therefore ask whether the exercise of jurisdiction itself—quite apart from the merits—would discourage protected expression.[295] Under such a framework, courts would not simply ask whether minimum contacts exist in the abstract, but whether treating speech-based contacts as dispositive is consistent with the Constitution’s commitment to uninhibited debate. In other words, if the jurisdictional trigger is so indeterminate that a reasonable user cannot know ex ante which posts will expose her to distant litigation, the doctrine risks doing indirectly what the First Amendment forbids directly: suppressing speech through the threat of sanction.

The Supreme Court in Calder v. Jones expressed concern about “double counting” First Amendment protections—once at jurisdiction and again at the merits.[296] But this worry was misplaced. The constitutional values differ by stage. At the jurisdictional stage, the concern is procedural: whether the burdens of distant litigation will silence speech before trial. At the merits stage, the concern is substantive: whether liability rules strike the right balance between reputation and free expression. Both concerns matter, and both warrant constitutional attention.[297]

Courts could also require more than an incidental tag or fleeting mention before exercising jurisdiction over out-of-state speakers.[298] That “something more” could take the form of deliberate engagement with forum institutions, sustained interactions with forum residents, or conduct that goes beyond casual online parlance.[299] By demanding a heightened showing, courts would protect against forum shopping and ensure that only genuine, purposeful connections support jurisdiction.

Relegating First Amendment concerns to the “fairness” prong is insufficient. Not every court reaches that stage; many cases are decided at the threshold question of contacts.[300] Integrating First Amendment considerations into the minimum contacts inquiry itself ensures that courts account for chilling effects upfront, rather than leaving them to be balanced away later.

This is not to suggest that the First Amendment categorically defeats jurisdiction in defamation cases. The Supreme Court rejected that premise in Keeton v. Hustler Magazine, Inc., explaining that even where speech is at issue, courts may exercise jurisdiction when the defendant’s circulation of thousands of magazines in the forum creates genuine ties to the state.[301] But Keeton’s reasoning does not foreclose the possibility that First Amendment values may guide the jurisdictional inquiry, particularly in an era where expression itself is treated as the jurisdictional hook. Where the contact is speech, a greater showing of connection is warranted before haling a defendant into a distant court.[302]

Conclusion

A focus of personal jurisdiction doctrine has been fairness for defendants. Since International Shoe, the Court has insisted that defendants receive “fair warning” of where they may be sued, so that the exercise of jurisdiction does not offend “traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice.”[303] Fairness protects both the individual defendant and the structural values of interstate federalism.[304]

As Part II showed, “the process is the punishment”; litigation itself imposes heavy burdens, especially in defamation cases where discovery and reputational fallout can be weaponized against speakers.[305] If jurisdictional doctrine permits vague or unpredictable contacts to confer jurisdiction, then the doctrine itself contributes to chilling speech.

The preceding Parts highlight the fundamental problem: The minimum contacts doctrine, once conceived as a fairness test, now subjects speakers to unpredictable liability in distant forums for the content of their expression.[306] If, as Part I showed, personal jurisdiction doctrine is rooted in fairness, and as Part II showed, the very process of defending a distant lawsuit can suppress speech, then Part III demonstrates that vague online “contacts” like tags or mentions only deepen the risk. The conclusion follows: First Amendment concerns belong back in the jurisdictional analysis.

The stakes are heightened online. As Johnson v. Griffin illustrates, whether a defendant faces jurisdiction can turn on the presence of a tag: The Sixth Circuit held that Kathy Griffin’s use of “@VisuWell” transformed her tweets into direct communications with a Tennessee company.[307] By contrast, in Blessing v. Chandrasekhar, the same defendant’s tweets about Kentucky students were deemed insufficient because she did not tag Kentucky institutions.[308]

Zooming out, the arguments made in this Note matter beyond the small subset of online speech cases and have greater implications for fairness and free speech. The use of litigation to silence critics undermines the fundamental principles of free speech enshrined in the First Amendment and promotes judicial remedies to political problems, which in turn impacts public discourse and the free exchange of ideas on matters of public interest. As the internet continues to expand the reach and impact of personal and public discourse, the intersection of personal jurisdiction doctrines with modern expressions of speech presents an urgent need for clarity.

Moreover, press freedom, globally, is on the decline, and it is also under attack in the United States.[309] In such a landscape, it is imperative that media publications and individual speakers, alike, be able to exercise their First Amendment rights without fear of potentially financially ruinous litigation, let alone in far-flung locales.[310] We no longer live in a world where “it is likely that a newspaper would sever its connection with the state asserting the jurisdiction” in order to protect itself from the state’s long-arm statute.[311] Such a choice is not available to modern publishers. As print media declines, consumers increasingly rely on digital platforms to shape their understanding of the world—whether through traditional news websites or commentary shared on social media.[312] In this landscape, litigation has become a tool for challenging disfavored or politically unpopular viewpoints, raising difficult questions about the balance of power and the role of defamation suits in American democracy.[313] Such lawsuits can intimidate journalists and media outlets, particularly when directed at those investigating public figures with the resources and determination to pursue prolonged legal battles. When litigation over content is used to chill speech, the need for clearer rules becomes pressing—rules that both guard against genuine defamation and safeguard free expression. Striking this balance is essential to preserving the integrity of public discourse in a democracy.

Copyright © 2026 Devanshi Patel-Martin, J.D., University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, 2024; B.A., Stanford University, 2014. I am deeply grateful to Professor Amanda Tyler for her guidance and supervision and to Professor Andrew Bradt for his thoughtful conversations about this project. I also thank the ABA Forum on Communications Law for the discussions that helped inspire this Note and the editors of the California Law Review for their careful attention throughout the process. Finally, my thanks to Alex and Greyson Martin for their unfailing support.

          [1].     This hypothetical is loosely adapted from a number of cases discussed in Part III, including Blessing v. Chandrasekhar, 988 F.3d 889, 892–89 (6th Cir. 2021) (“On January 18, 2019, students at Covington Catholic High School participated in the annual March for Life rally in Washington, D.C. An incident occurred after the march between a group of Covington Catholic students, including the plaintiffs, and others gathered at the Lincoln Memorial, including ‘a self-described Native American Elder.’ The complaints allege that images of the confrontation ‘were disseminated world-wide . . . igniting a profound and powerful controversy.’ Sujana Chandrasekhar, a doctor who lives in New Jersey, posted about the incident on Twitter two days later. She tweeted a picture that included the numbered headshots of 45 Covington Catholic students, along with a caption that read: ‘These are scary faces, indeed. #CovingtonShame 1. Stop tax breaks for “religious” establishments. 2. Massive re-education is needed, for these children, their families, and their communities. 3. I hope they don’t get to use their #whiteprivilege (except 23) like #Kavanaugh did.’ The corner of the picture included text reading ‘Do you know them? The world would like to know too.’”) (internal citations omitted).

          [2].     Id. at 893.                                                                

          [3].     See 465 U.S. 783, 788–89 (1984).

          [4].     See, e.g., Brian E. Daughdrill, Personal Jurisdiction and the Internet: Waiting for the Other Shoe to Drop on First Amendment Concerns, 51 Mercer L. Rev. 919, 920–21 (2000) (“Courts attempting to impose traditional personal jurisdiction analysis on [i]nternet-related contacts have no guidance from the Supreme Court and continue to reach inconsistent results as they attempt to force territorial-based analysis onto a one dimensional universe lacking any concept of boundaries, territories, or other physical properties.”); Joel R. Reidenberg, Technology and Internet Jurisdiction, 153 U. Pa. L. Rev. 1951, 1971 (2005) (“The design of the safe zones can give [i]nternet participants the freedom of choice to select whether or not their activities give rise to contacts empowering states with personal jurisdiction and the application of local law. Technological innovation should create products and services to enable these participant choices.”). See generally Herbal Brands, Inc. v. Photoplaza, Inc., 72 F.4th 1085 (9th Cir. 2023); Briskin v. Shopify, Inc., 135 F.4th 739 (9th Cir. 2025) (en banc).

          [5].     “A state court’s assertion of jurisdiction exposes defendants to the State’s coercive power, and is therefore subject to review for compatibility with the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause.” Goodyear Dunlop Tires Operations, S.A. v. Brown, 564 U.S. 915, 923 (2011) (citing Int’l Shoe Co. v. Washington, 326 U.S. 310, 316 (1945)) (holding that jurisdiction is proper when a defendant has “minimum contacts” with the forum state such that maintaining the suit does not offend “traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice”).

          [6].     “A court may assert general jurisdiction over foreign (sister-state or foreign-country) corporations to hear any and all claims against them when their affiliations with the State are so ‘continuous and systematic’ as to render them essentially at home in the forum State.” Goodyear Dunlop Tires Operations, 564 U.S. at 919. In contrast, a court may assert specific jurisdiction when “the suit ‘aris[es] out of or relate[s] to the defendant’s contacts with the forum.’” Daimler AG v. Bauman, 571 U.S. 117, 127 (2014). “The ‘substantial connection’ between the defendant and the forum State necessary for a finding of minimum contacts must come about by an action of the defendant purposefully directed toward the forum State.” Asahi Metal Indus. Co. v. Superior Ct., 480 U.S. 102, 112 (1987) (citation omitted); see also McGee v. Int’l Life Ins. Co., 355 U.S. 220, 223 (1957); Keeton v. Hustler Magazine, Inc., 465 U.S. 770, 775 (1984) (“In judging minimum contacts, a court properly focuses on ‘the relationship among the defendant, the forum, and the litigation.’”) (internal citations omitted).

          [7].     “A long-arm statute is a statute that allows for a court to obtain personal jurisdiction over an out-of-state defendant on the basis of certain acts committed by an out-of-state defendant, provided that the defendant has a sufficient connection with the state. When a court . . . has jurisdiction due to a long-arm statute, the court is said to have long-arm jurisdiction.” Long-Arm Statute, Corn. L. Sch.: Legal Info. Inst., https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/long-arm_statute [https://perma.cc/8HJG-EGZX].

          [8].     “The Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment limits the power of a state court to render a valid personal judgment against a nonresident defendant.” World-Wide Volkswagen Corp. v. Woodson, 444 U.S. 286, 291 (1980).

          [9].     Int’l Shoe, 326 U.S. at 316.

        [10].     Part I.A provides an in-depth overview of the Calder test’s place in the personal jurisdiction doctrine and discusses it in greater detail.

        [11].     See Calder v. Jones, 465 U.S. 783, 790 (1984).

        [12].     This Note uses the broader term “defamation” to encompass a variety of reputation-based harms, including libel and slander. Other causes of action related to online speech include claims for invasion of privacy, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and similar torts. Regardless of the specific cause of action, this Note addresses cases in which a plaintiff sues a defendant based on the content of the defendant’s online speech. See Restatement (Second) of Torts §§ 552, 553, 559, 581 (A.L.I. 1965).

        [13].     See Gretchen Yelmini, Internet Jurisdiction and the 21st Century: Zippo, Calder, and the Metaverse, 55 Conn. L. Rev. Online 1, 15 (2023) (“Additionally, the foreseeability of harm is also suspect in an era where the ‘Florida Man’ has become such a popular meme that it is nearly synonymous with internet culture, so much so that it has reached beyond the internet to inform popular culture as a whole.”).

        [14].     “Forum shopping refers to the practice of pursuing a claim subject to concurrent jurisdiction in the court that will treat the claim most favorably.” Forum Shopping, Corn. L. Sch.: Legal Info. Inst., https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/forum_shopping [https://perma.cc/MPQ3-7T9U].

        [15].     See, e.g., Stanley E. Cox, Personal Jurisdiction for Alleged Intentional or Negligent Effects, Matched to Forum Regulatory Interest, 19 Lewis & Clark L. Rev. 725, 735 (2015) (“Defendants interested in curtailing plaintiff opportunities for forum shopping should prefer a jurisdictional rule that limits plaintiff forum shopping only to those forums that have strong interest in regulating the harms alleged.”).

        [16].     See Lamont v. Postmaster Gen. of U.S., 381 U.S. 301, 307 (1965) (invalidating a statute because it imposed “a deterrent effect” on the exercise of First Amendment rights).

        [17].     See 376 U.S. 254, 279 (1964) (warning that the fear of liability may “dampen[] the vigor and limit[] the variety of public debate”).

        [18].     World-Wide Volkswagen Corp. v. Woodson, 444 U.S. 286, 291 (1980) (“The Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment limits the power of a state court to render a valid personal judgment against a nonresident defendant.”).

        [19].     988 F.3d 889, 907 (6th Cir. 2021).

        [20].     85 F.4th 429, 435 (6th Cir. 2023).

        [21].     Int’l Shoe Co. v. Washington, 326 U.S. 310, 319 (1945) (“Whether due process is satisfied must depend rather upon the quality and nature of the activity in relation to the fair and orderly administration of the laws which it was the purpose of the due process clause to insure.”). Further cases to illustrate this evolution are discussed in detail in Part I.A.

        [22].     95 U.S. 714, 733 (1878) (asserting that a nonresident defendant “must be brought within [the state’s] jurisdiction by service of process within the State, or his voluntary appearance”).

        [23].     Id. at 732–33.

        [24].     Id. at 733.

        [25].     See, e.g., Mary Twitchell, The Myth of General Jurisdiction, 101 Harv. L. Rev. 610, 611–12 (1988); Arthur T. von Mehren & Donald T. Trautman, Jurisdiction to Adjudicate: A Suggested Analysis, 79 Harv. L. Rev. 1121, 1124–25 (1966); Linda J. Silberman, The End of Another Era: Reflections on Daimler and Its Implications for Judicial Jurisdiction in the United States, 19 Lewis & Clark L. Rev. 675, 678–79 (2015).

        [26].     “Due process protects the defendant’s right not to be coerced except by lawful judicial power.” J. McIntyre Mach., Ltd. v. Nicastro, 564 U.S. 873, 877 (2011). See also World-Wide Volkswagen Corp. v. Woodson, 444 U.S. 286, 292 (1980) (“The protection against inconvenient litigation is typically described in terms of ‘reasonableness’ or ‘fairness.’ We have said that the defendant’s contacts with the forum State must be such that maintenance of the suit ‘does not offend traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice.’”).

        [27].     See Pennoyer v. Neff, 95 U.S. 714, 720, 722 (1878) (holding that “[t]he authority of every tribunal is necessarily restricted by the territorial limits of the State in which it is established” and that “no State can exercise direct jurisdiction and authority over persons or property without its territory”).

        [28].     326 U.S. 310, 316 (1945) (“[D]ue process requires only that in order to subject a defendant to a judgment in personam, if he be not present within the territory of the forum, he have certain minimum contacts with it such that the maintenance of the suit does not offend ‘traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice.’”).

        [29].     Id. at 316, 320.

        [30].     Daimler AG v. Bauman, 571 U.S. 117, 125 (2014) (“Federal courts ordinarily follow state law in determining the bounds of their jurisdiction over persons. See Fed. Rule Civ. Proc. 4(k)(1)(A) (stating that service of process is effective to establish personal jurisdiction over a defendant ‘who is subject to the jurisdiction of a court of general jurisdiction in the state where the district court is located.’).”).

        [31].     World-Wide Volkswagen, 444 U.S. at 291–92 (“The concept of minimum contacts, in turn, can be seen to perform two related, but distinguishable, functions. It protects the defendant against the burdens of litigating in a distant or inconvenient forum. And it acts to ensure that the States, through their courts, do not reach out beyond the limits imposed on them by their status as coequal sovereigns in a federal system.”); Burger King Corp. v. Rudzewicz, 471 U.S. 462, 474 (1985) (“[T]he constitutional touchstone remains whether the defendant purposefully established ‘minimum contacts’ in the forum State.”).

        [32].     In Hanson v. Denckla, the Court stressed that jurisdiction requires a defendant’s own purposeful acts, not “random, isolated, or fortuitous” ones. 357 U.S. 235, 253 (1958); see also Keeton v. Hustler Magazine, Inc., 465 U.S. 770, 774 (1984). The Court later described this idea as “purposeful availment,” requiring the defendant to “reach out beyond” its home by, for example, exploiting a market or entering a contractual relationship in the forum. Burger King, 471 U.S. at 472–75; Walden v. Fiore, 571 U.S. 277, 285 (2014). Yet even with purposeful contacts, jurisdiction is proper only where the plaintiff’s claims “arise out of or relate to” the defendant’s forum activities, a limitation that narrows the doctrine considerably. Helicopteros Nacionales de Colombia, S.A. v. Hall, 466 U.S. 408, 414 (1984); Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. v. Superior Ct., 582 U.S. 255, 262 (2017). Most recently, in Ford Motor Co. v. Montana Eighth Judicial District Court, the Court confirmed that relatedness does not demand a strict causal showing but still requires a close affiliation between the defendant’s forum conduct and the plaintiff’s claims. 141 S. Ct. 1017, 1024–25 (2021).

        [33].     Walden, 571 U.S. at 283–84; Monkton Ins. Servs., Ltd. v. Ritter, 768 F.3d 429, 433–34 (5th Cir. 2014); Gordy v. Daily News, L.P., 95 F.3d 829, 834 (9th Cir. 1996).

        [34].     “The contacts needed for this kind of jurisdiction often go by the name ‘purposeful availment.’” Ford Motor Co., 141 S. Ct. at 1024 (citing Burger King, 471 U.S. at 475); see also World-Wide Volkswagen, 444 U.S. at 297; Lexington Ins. Co. v. Hotai Ins. Co., 938 F.3d 874, 881–82 (7th Cir. 2019) (recognizing that even though the insurer was expected to pay the claim in the forum, it was insufficiently foreseeable it would be haled to defend there); Universal Leather, LLC v. Koro AR, S.A., 773 F.3d 553, 559 (4th Cir. 2014).

        [35].     444 U.S. at 291 (“The Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment limits the power of a state court to render a valid personal judgment against a nonresident defendant. A judgment rendered in violation of due process is void in the rendering State and is not entitled to full faith and credit elsewhere. Due process requires that the defendant be given adequate notice of the suit and be subject to the personal jurisdiction of the court.”) (internal citations omitted).

        [36].     Id. at 292 (“The relationship between the defendant and the forum must be such that it is ‘reasonable . . . to require the corporation to defend the particular suit which is brought there.’ Implicit in this emphasis on reasonableness is the understanding that the burden on the defendant, while always a primary concern, will in an appropriate case be considered in light of other relevant factors . . . .”) (internal citations omitted).

        [37].     See id.

        [38].     465 U.S. 783, 789–90 (1984).

        [39].     Id. at 790 (citing World-Wide Volkswagen, 444 U.S. at 297).

        [40].     Id. at 789–90.

        [41].     471 U.S. 462, 474–75 (1985).

        [42].     Id. at 474–76.

        [43].     Id. at 475 (“This ‘purposeful availment’ requirement ensures that a defendant will not be haled into a jurisdiction solely as a result of ‘random,’ ‘fortuitous,’ or ‘attenuated’ contacts.”).

        [44].     480 U.S. 102, 108–13 (1987).

        [45].     See, e.g., J. McIntyre Mach., Ltd. v. Nicastro, 564 U.S. 873, 879 (2011) (“This Court’s Asahi decision may be responsible in part for that court’s error regarding the stream of commerce, and this case presents an opportunity to provide greater clarity.”).

        [46].     Id. at 877–85 (plurality opinion); id. at 888–93 (Breyer, J., concurring in the judgment). Asahi and Nicastro also exposed the difficulties of defining purposeful conduct in a global marketplace. See Asahi, 480 U.S. at 108–13; Nicastro, 564 U.S. at 877–85.

        [47].     141 S. Ct. 1017, 1024–26 (2021).

        [48].     Id.

        [49].     See Burger King Corp. v. Rudzewicz, 471 U.S. 462, 474–75 (1985); Calder v. Jones, 465 U.S. 783, 789–90 (1984).

        [50].     Later decisions have added that our doctrine similarly provides defendants with “fair warning”—knowledge that “a particular activity may subject [it] to the jurisdiction of a foreign sovereign.” Burger King, 471 U.S. at 472; World-Wide Volkswagen Corp. v. Woodson, 444 U.S. 286, 297 (1980) (likewise referring to “clear notice”). A defendant can thus “structure [its] primary conduct” to lessen or avoid exposure to a given State’s courts. Ford Motor Co., 141 S.Ct. at 1026.

        [51].     World-Wide Volkswagen, 444 U.S. at 292 (“The protection against inconvenient litigation is typically described in terms of ‘reasonableness’ or ‘fairness.’ We have said that the defendant’s contacts with the forum State must be such that maintenance of the suit ‘does not offend traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice.’”) (quoting Int’l Shoe Co. v. Washington, 326 U.S. 310, 316 (1945)).

        [52].     Consider, for example, the Court’s infamous debate over a duck decoy sold over the internet in its opinion in Ford Motor Co., 141 S. Ct. 1017, 1035 (Gorsuch, J., concurring) (“[A] retiree in Maine . . . starts a one-man business, carving and selling wooden duck decoys. In time, the man sells a defective decoy over the [i]nternet to a purchaser in another State who is injured. See ante, at 1029 n.4. We aren’t told how. (Was the decoy coated in lead paint?) But put that aside. The majority says this hypothetical supplies a useful study in contrast with our cases. On the majority’s telling, Ford’s ‘continuous’ contacts with Montana and Minnesota are enough to establish an ‘affiliation’ with those States; by comparison, the decoy seller’s contacts may be too ‘isolated’ and ‘sporadic’ to entitle an injured buyer to sue in his home State. But if this comparison highlights anything, it is only the litigation sure to follow. For between the poles of ‘continuous’ and ‘isolated’ contacts lie a virtually infinite number of ‘affiliations’ waiting to be explored.”).

        [53].     See, e.g., Matlin v. Spin Master Corp., 921 F.3d 701, 707 (7th Cir. 2019) (holding that a single online sale is insufficient for personal jurisdiction because even a “highly interactive” website that is accessible from, but does not target, the forum state will not confer jurisdiction).

        [54].     Asahi Metal Indus. Co. v. Superior Ct., 480 U.S. 102, 111 (1987) (“Other courts, however, have understood the Due Process Clause to require something more than that the defendant was aware of its product’s entry into the forum State through the stream of commerce in order for the State to exert jurisdiction over the defendant.”).

        [55].     See, e.g., Holland Am. Line, Inc. v. Wartsila N. Am., Inc., 485 F.3d 450, 459 (9th Cir. 2007) (“The placement of a product into the stream of commerce, without more, is not an act purposefully directed toward a forum state.”); LNS Enters. LLC v. Cont’l Motors, Inc., 22 F.4th 852, 860 (9th Cir. 2022) (holding that “something more” was required for personal jurisdiction over an out-of-state manufacturer).

        [56].     Ford Motor Co., 141 S. Ct. 1017 at 1024. For the Court’s current approach to general jurisdiction, consider, for example, the following discussion from the 2021 decision in Ford Motor Co.

[The Court recognized] two kinds of personal jurisdiction: general (sometimes called all-purpose) jurisdiction and specific (sometimes called case-linked) jurisdiction. A state court may exercise general jurisdiction only when a defendant is “essentially at home” in the State. General jurisdiction, as its name implies, extends to “any and all claims” brought against a defendant. Those claims need not relate to the forum State or the defendant’s activity there; they may concern events and conduct anywhere in the world. But that breadth imposes a correlative limit: Only a select “set of affiliations with a forum” will expose a defendant to such sweeping jurisdiction.

Id. (internal citations omitted).

        [57].     564 U.S. 915, 919 (2011); 571 U.S. 117, 137 (2014).

        [58].     465 U.S. 783 (1984).

        [59].     465 U.S. 770 (1984).

        [60].     Keeton, 465 U.S. at 773, 781; Calder, 465 U.S. at 785–87.

        [61].     Although newsgathering is undeniably a form of expressive activity, the Court has never recognized the act of gathering information as enjoying heightened First Amendment protection for jurisdictional purposes. See, e.g., Branzburg v. Hayes, 408 U.S. 665, 684 (1972) (“[T]he First Amendment does not guarantee the press a constitutional right of special access to information not available to the public generally.”); Zemel v. Rusk, 381 U.S. 1, 17 (1965) (“The right to speak and publish does not carry with it the unrestrained right to gather information.”); Houchins v. KQED, Inc., 438 U.S. 1, 11 (1978) (rejecting a special right of access to government information); Pell v. Procunier, 417 U.S. 817, 833–35 (1974) (rejecting a claim of special First Amendment right to interview inmates).

        [62].     Because this Note focuses on the First Amendment considerations inherent in defamation cases, and because the decision to exclude those considerations from jurisdictional analysis originated in Calder, this Section focuses more on Calder than it does on Keeton.

        [63].     Notably, the Court seemed to excuse Kathy Keeton’s forum shopping and resulting choice of law, writing:

Petitioner’s successful search for a State with a lengthy statute of limitations is no different from the litigation strategy of countless plaintiffs who seek a forum with favorable substantive or procedural rules or sympathetic local populations. Certainly Hustler Magazine, Inc., which chose to enter the New Hampshire market, can be charged with knowledge of its laws and no doubt would have claimed the benefit of them if it had a complaint against a subscriber, distributor, or other commercial partner.

Keeton, 465 U.S. at 779.

        [64].     Id. at 781.

        [65].     Id. at 780 (“[P]laintiff’s residence is not, of course, completely irrelevant . . . lack of residence will not defeat jurisdiction established on the basis of defendant’s contacts.”).

        [66].     According to Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary, the “single publication rule” is “a rule in the law of libel that treats an edition of a print source (as a magazine) as one publication giving rise to one cause of action for libel regardless of how many copies were printed and where they were distributed.” Single Publication Rule, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/legal/single%20publication%20rule [https://perma.cc/5R79-UFJ4].

        [67].     Keeton, 465 U.S. at 772.

        [68].     Id. at 781.

        [69].     Id. at 780 (finding that “in almost every libel action brought somewhere other than the plaintiff’s domicile,” the bulk of the harm will occur elsewhere).

        [70].     Id. at 780–81.

        [71].     See Johnson v. TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc., 21 F.4th 314, 325 (5th Cir. 2021) (“But woodenly applying Keeton to internet publications, as the dissent suggests, would vitiate the requirement that a defendant purposefully avail himself of the forum state before he may be haled into court there . . . . Sending tens of thousands of magazines to a state is an affirmative act that displays the publisher’s specific intent to target that state with what the magazines contain.”).

        [72].     Keeton, 465 U.S. at 776 (acknowledging that the state of New Hampshire had an “‘interest’ in adjudicating the dispute” under the Fourteenth Amendment Due Process Clause, yet sustaining jurisdiction based on nationwide circulation).

        [73].     James P. George, Running on Empty: Ford v. Montana and the Folly of Minimum Contacts, 30 Geo. Mason L. Rev. 1, 27 (2022).

        [74].     465 U.S. 783, 788 (1984).

        [75].     Id. at 784.

        [76].     Id. at 788.

        [77].     Id.

        [78].     Id.

        [79].     The Ninth Circuit, in particular, has relied heavily on Calder in the internet context. Though not a speech case, its recent decision in Briskin v. Shopify, Inc., 135 F.4th 739 (9th Cir. 2025) (en banc) illustrates Calder’s application to online commerce. The key issue was whether Shopify’s payment- and data-processing operations in California established personal jurisdiction. Id. at 750. In Briskin, the court applied the Calder “effects test” to reverse the district court’s dismissal for lack of specific personal jurisdiction over Shopify. Id. at 751, 762.

        [80].     Cassandra Burke Robertson, The Inextricable Merits Problem in Personal Jurisdiction, 45 U.C. Davis L. Rev. 1301, 1304 (2012).

        [81].     That said, courts have insisted that the jurisdictional analysis does not depend on changes in technology. World-Wide Volkswagen Corp. v. Woodson, 444 U.S. 286, 294 (1980) (“[I]t is a mistake to assume that this trend [in flexible approaches to jurisdiction] heralds the eventual demise of all restrictions on the personal jurisdiction of state courts. Those restrictions are more than a guarantee of immunity from inconvenient or distant litigation. They are a consequence of territorial limitations on the power of the respective states.”); Johnson v. TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc., 21 F.4th 314, 325 (5th Cir. 2021) (explaining that “[o]ur personal-jurisdiction inquiry should not change just because a defendant operates a web publication instead of a physical one,” but noting that “substantial physical circulation of print media” may reflect purposeful availment in a way that websites, which are “‘circulated’ to the public by virtue of their universal accessibility, which exists from their inception,” do not).

        [82].     Scott Fruehwald, The Boundary of Personal Jurisdiction: The “Effects Test” and the Protection of Crazy Horse’s Name, 38 J. Marshall L. Rev. 381, 386 (2004).

        [83].     Courts do not rely on Keeton as much as they rely on Calder when determining contacts sufficient to confer jurisdiction, perhaps due to Keeton’s breadth.

        [84].     415 F.3d 419, 427 (5th Cir. 2005).

        [85].     Walden v. Fiore, 571 U.S. 277, 279 (2014).

        [86].     Id. at 286.

        [87].     Id.

        [88].     Id. at 290.

        [89].     840 F. App’x 928, 930 (9th Cir. 2020) (citing Walden, 571 U.S. 277).

        [90].     Id. at 929.

        [91].     Id. at 930.

        [92].     Id.

        [93].     Id. at 931 (quoting Calder v. Jones, 465 U.S. 783, 788–89 (1984)).

        [94].     Id.

        [95].     Id. at 930.

        [96].     Id.

        [97].     For discussion of Calder’s relevance, see, for example, A. Benjamin Spencer, Terminating Calder: “Effects” Based Jurisdiction in the Ninth Circuit After Schwarzenegger v. Fred Martin Motor Co., 26 Whittier L. Rev. 197 (2004); see also Fruehwald, supra note 82.

        [98].     This Note uses “traditional media” to refer to legacy forms of mass communication—such as newspapers, magazines, radio, and broadcast or cable television—that distribute content to large audiences through centralized editorial control, in contrast to decentralized or user-generated platforms like social media. While no canonical institutional definition exists, this usage builds on common understandings of “mass media.” See Mass Medium, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mass%20medium [https://perma.cc/9EJ5-FVGH].

        [99].     Id.

      [100].     See, e.g., Time, Inc. v. Hill, 385 U.S. 374, 389–90 (1967) (acknowledging the tension between defamation law and First Amendment protections).

      [101].     Id.

      [102].     426 F.2d 858, 865 (5th Cir. 1970).

      [103].     394 F.2d 774, 777 (D.C. Cir. 1968).

      [104].     Frederick Schauer, Fear, Risk and the First Amendment: Unraveling the Chilling Effect, 58 B.U. L. Rev. 685, 710 (1978).

      [105].     Comment, Long-Arm Jurisdiction over Publishers: To Chill a Mocking Word, 67 Colum. L. Rev. 342, 342 (1967).

      [106].     N.Y. Times Co. v. Connor, 365 F.2d 567, 572 (5th Cir. 1966).

      [107].     Curtis Publ’g Co. v. Golino, 383 F.2d 586, 592 (5th Cir. 1967).

      [108].     Gonzales v. Atlanta Const., No. 78 C 2969, 1979 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 15172, at *1 (N.D. Ill. Jan. 10, 1979).

      [109].     Id. at *4. The court also named several other federal cases that held similarly. See id. at *6 (“Other courts have reached similar results in refusing to uphold jurisdiction over non-resident publishers in defamation actions based on minimal circulation within the forum state. Walker v. Field Enterprises, 332 F.2d 632 (10th Cir. 1964); Buckley v. New York Times Co., 338 F.2d 470 (5th Cir. 1964); Curtis Publishing Co. v. Birdsong, 360 F.2d 344 (5th Cir. 1966); Walker v. General Features Corp., 319 F.2d 583 (10th Cir. 1963); McBride v. Owens, 454 F.Supp. 731 (S.D. Tex. 1978).”).

      [110].     Calder v. Jones, 465 U.S. 783, 790–91 (1984) (internal citations omitted).

      [111].     Id. at 790 (“To reintroduce those concerns at the jurisdictional stage would be a form of double counting.”).

      [112].     Keeton v. Hustler Magazine, Inc., 465 U.S. 770, 781 n.12 (1984). The Court also emphasized: “There is ‘no constitutional value in false statements of fact.’” Id. at 776 (quoting Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., 418 U.S. 323, 340 (1974)).

      [113].     See, e.g., Internet Sols. Corp. v. Marshall, 39 So. 3d 1201, 1215 (Fla. 2010) (rejecting the defendant’s argument that the court should consider First Amendment principles in construing Florida’s long-arm statute).

      [114].     571 U.S. 277, 279 (2014).

      [115].     The doctrine of qualified immunity most prevalently captures this recognition: that immunity against suit is needed when certain constitutional or policy imperatives are at stake. The Supreme Court has offered the following rationale for qualified immunity: “Qualified immunity gives government officials breathing room to make reasonable but mistaken judgments about open legal questions.” Ashcroft v. Al-Kidd, 563 U.S. 731, 743 (2011). The Court has also stated, “[T]he driving force behind Harlow’s substantial reformulation of qualified-immunity principles [was a desire to ensure] that ‘insubstantial claims’ against government officials [would] be resolved prior to discovery.” Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 635, 640 n.2 (1987) (citing Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818 (1982)). Although qualified immunity engenders thorny debate—see, e.g., Jamison v. McClendon, 476 F. Supp. 3d 386 (S.D. Miss. 2020)—it underscores the recognition that the demands of litigation should, in some contexts, be subjugated to the fulfillment of certain governmental objectives.

      [116].     See, e.g., Keyishian v. Bd. of Regents, 385 U.S. 589, 604 (1967) (“The danger of that chilling effect upon the exercise of vital First Amendment rights must be guarded against by sensitive tools . . . .”).

      [117].     Dombrowski v. Pfister, 380 U.S. 479, 486 (1965).

      [118].     344 U.S. 183, 195 (1952) (Frankfurter, J., concurring).

      [119].     See, e.g., Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444, 447–49 (1969) (per curiam) (protecting advocacy of illegal conduct unless directed to inciting imminent lawless action); cf. NAACP v. Button, 371 U.S. 415, 433 (1963) (emphasizing the need to guard against chilling effects from vague regulation).

      [120].     Schauer, supra note 104, at 685 (citing Note, The Chilling Effect in Constitutional Law, 69 Colum. L. Rev. 808 (1969); Note, The First Amendment Overbreadth Doctrine, 83 Harv. L. Rev. 844 (1970)).

      [121].     Id. at 687.

      [122].     Id. at 688.

      [123].     Calder v. Jones, 465 U.S. 783, 790 (1984).

      [124].     A statement is made with “actual malice” when made “with knowledge that it is false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.” 376 U.S. 254, 279–80 (1964).

      [125].     See, e.g., Buckley v. New York Post Corp., 373 F.2d 175, 182–83 (2d Cir. 1967).

      [126].     418 U.S. 323, 340 (1974).

      [127].     Calder, 465 U.S. at 790 (stating that reintroducing First Amendment concerns at the jurisdictional stage “would be a form of double counting”).

      [128].     Brief for TechFreedom as Amicus Curiae Supporting Defendant-Appellee, Johnson v. Griffin, 85 F.4th 429 (6th Cir. 2023) (No. 23-5257), 2023 WL 4137509, at *17 (emphasis omitted).

      [129].     Id. (emphasis omitted).

      [130].     Adam Liptak, Clarence Thomas Renews Call for Reconsideration of Landmark Libel Ruling, N.Y. Times (Oct. 10, 2023), https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/10/us/clarence-thomas-libel-supreme-court.html [https://perma.cc/Y7TG-UQDD].

      [131].     60 F.4th 744 (4th Cir. 2023).

      [132].     A petition for certiorari filed by Las Vegas casino mogul Steve Wynn sought an overturning of Sullivan. See Wynn v. Assoc. Press, 555 P.3d 272 (Nev. 2024). The Supreme Court denied certiorari in Wynn v. Assoc. Press, 145 S. Ct. 1434 (2025), declining to revisit Sullivan.

      [133].     This Note refers to “Twitter” and “X” interchangeably. The usage generally follows the facts of the cases discussed: When speech occurred while the platform was named Twitter, courts typically refer to it as such. Moreover, both the cases cited herein and the prevailing parlance at the time this Note was drafted reflected the terms “Twitter” and “tweets.”

      [134].     Jeffrey Gottfried, Americans’ Social Media Use, Pew Rsch. Ctr. (Jan. 31, 2024), https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2024/01/31/americans-social-media-use/ [https://perma.cc/PS7Z-HZ4P].

      [135].     The opinion technically says “a phone line.” Reno v. ACLU, 521 U.S. 844, 868–70 (1997) (“[T]he [i]nternet can hardly be considered a ‘scarce’ expressive commodity. It provides relatively unlimited, low-cost capacity for communication of all kinds. The Government estimates that ‘[a]s many as 40 million people use the [i]nternet today, and that figure is expected to grow to 200 million by 1999.’ This dynamic, multifaceted category of communication includes not only traditional print and news services, but also audio, video, and still images, as well as interactive, real-time dialogue. Through the use of chat rooms, any person with a phone line can become a town crier with a voice that resonates farther than it could from any soapbox. Through the use of Web pages, mail exploders, and newsgroups, the same individual can become a pamphleteer. As the District Court found, ‘the content on the [i]nternet is as diverse as human thought.’”).

      [136].     Brown v. Ent. Merch. Ass’n, 564 U.S. 786, 790 (2011).

      [137].     Reno, 521 U.S. at 870.

      [138].     Many of the lawsuits arising from the #MeToo movement illustrate this dynamic. Defamation law has frequently been deployed as a weapon against those who speak out about sexual harassment and assault, forcing defendants into costly, protracted litigation even when their claims implicate matters of substantial public concern. The prospect of being sued for defamation—regardless of eventual success on the merits—creates precisely the sort of chilling effect on speech that New York Times Co. v. Sullivan sought to mitigate. See Pooja Bhaskar, Milkovich, #MeToo, and “Liars”: Defamation Law and the Fact-Opinion Distinction, 88 Fordham L. Rev. 691 (2019). Indeed, commentators have noted that the procedural burdens of defending such suits, coupled with the reputational and financial risks, can dissuade victims from coming forward and stifle broader public debate on issues of sexual misconduct.

      [139].     Some of the concerns animating Section 230 immunity are true of immunity doctrines, generally.

      [140].     See, for example, the 2024 slander case by producer Dan Schneider in response to a Warner Brothers docuseries (Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV) that included numerous interviews stating that during his tenure at Nickelodeon, he had allegedly abused several children. Complaint, Schneider v. Warner Bros. Discovery Inc., 24NNCV01328 (Cal. Super. Ct. May 1, 2024).

      [141].     Understanding Anti-SLAPP Laws, Reps. Comm. for Freedom of the Press, https://www.rcfp.org/resources/anti-slapp-laws/ [https://perma.cc/6UYN-6AKT].

      [142].     The Institute for Free Speech estimates that in a state without an anti-SLAPP statute in place, “it would cost between $21,000 and $55,000 to defeat a typical meritless defamation lawsuit in court, with the median at about $39,000.” David Keating, Estimating the Cost of Fighting a SLAPP in a State with No Anti-SLAPP Law, Inst. For Free Speech: Blog (June 16, 2022), https://www.ifs.org/blog/estimating-the-cost-of-fighting-a-slapp-in-a-state-with-no-anti-slapp-law/ [https://perma.cc/KQ9Y-73AC].

      [143].     “Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation (SLAPP suit) refers to lawsuits brought by individuals and entities to dissuade their critics from continuing to produce negative publicity. By definition, SLAPP suits do not have any true legal claims against the critics. People bring SLAPP suits because they can either temporarily prevent their critics from making public statements against them or more commonly to make critics spend all of their time and resources defending the SLAPP suits.” SLAPP Suit, Corn. L. Sch.: Legal Info. Inst., https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/slapp_suit [https://perma.cc/FZB4-W9TK].

      [144].     Kathryn W. Tate, California’s Anti-Slapp Legislation: A Summary of and Commentary on Its Operation and Scope, 33 Loy. L.A. L. Rev. 801, 805 (2000) (“Because of the motives behind the SLAPP action, the usual judicial safeguards were seen as inadequate because they focused on preventing a meritless claim from prevailing.”).

      [145].     See Joseph J. Brecher, The Public Interest and Intimidation Suits: A New Approach, 28 Santa Clara L. Rev. 105, 114 (1988).

[146].    SLAPP Suit, supra note 143 (“Given their ability to stop individuals from exercising their right to free speech, over 30 states have adopted Anti-SLAPP statutes that make it easier for defendants in SLAPP lawsuits to have the case dismissed at the outset, before spending lots of money on attorney fees. In egregious SLAPP cases, an Anti-SLAPP statute may even require the plaintiff to pay the legal fees of the defendant.”).

      [147].     Tate, supra note 144, at 805.

      [148].     Cal. Civ. Proc. Code § 425.16(a) (West 1994) (“The Legislature finds and declares that there has been a disturbing increase in lawsuits brought primarily to chill the valid exercise of the constitutional rights of freedom of speech and petition for the redress of grievances. The Legislature finds and declares that it is in the public interest to encourage continued participation in matters of public significance, and that this participation should not be chilled through abuse of the judicial process. To this end, this section shall be construed broadly.”); see also 1989 Wash. Sess. Laws. 1119–20.

      [149].     Cal. Civ. Proc. Code § 425.16(a) (West 1994).

      [150].     Austin Vining & Sarah Matthews, Overview of Anti-SLAPP Laws, Reps. Comm. for Freedom of the Press, https://www.rcfp.org/introduction-anti-slapp-guide/ [https://perma.cc/2QVB-GSAJ].

      [151].     Id.

      [152].     See, e.g., Cal. Civ. Proc. Code § 425.16(b)(1)–(3) (“(1) A cause of action against a person arising from any act of that person in furtherance of the person’s right of petition or free speech under the United States Constitution or the California Constitution in connection with a public issue shall be subject to a special motion to strike, unless the court determines that the plaintiff has established that there is a probability that the plaintiff will prevail on the claim. (2) In making its determination, the court shall consider the pleadings, and supporting and opposing affidavits stating the facts upon which the liability or defense is based. (3) If the court determines that the plaintiff has established a probability that the plaintiff will prevail on the claim, neither that determination nor the fact of that determination shall be admissible in evidence at any later stage of the case, or in any subsequent action, and no burden of proof or degree of proof otherwise applicable shall be affected by that determination in any later stage of the case or in any subsequent proceeding.”).

      [153].     Mass. Gen. Laws Ann. ch. 231, § 59H.

      [154].     Understanding Anti-SLAPP Laws, Reps. Comm. for Freedom of the Press, https://www.rcfp.org/resources/anti-slapp-laws/ [https://perma.cc/6UYN-6AKT].

      [155].     See, e.g., Cal. Civ. Proc. Code § 425.16.

      [156].     See Colin Quinlan, Erie and the First Amendment: State Anti-SLAPP Laws in Federal Court After Shady Grove, 114 Colum. L. Rev. 367, 369 (2014) (arguing that “state anti-SLAPP laws should not be deemed to conflict with the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure; and second, that even nominally procedural provisions of state anti-SLAPP laws should be applied in federal court”).

      [157].     Some federal courts of appeal have allowed defendants to invoke these protections in federal court. See, e.g., Adelson v. Harris, 774 F.3d 803, 809 (2d Cir. 2014) (finding application of Nevada’s anti-SLAPP provisions in federal court “unproblematic”); Liberty Synergistics Inc. v. Microflo Ltd., 718 F.3d 138, 144 (2d Cir. 2013) (applying California’s anti-SLAPP law in federal court); Godin v. Schencks, 629 F.3d 79, 81 (1st Cir. 2010) (finding that Maine’s anti-SLAPP law applied in federal court); U.S. ex rel. Newsham v. Lockheed Missiles & Space Co., 190 F.3d 963, 973 (9th Cir. 1999) (applying certain provisions of the California anti-SLAPP law in federal court).

      [158].     Nevada has one of the strongest anti-SLAPP statutes, while California’s statute is robust but differs in procedural features. See Nev. Rev. Stat. § 41.660; Cal. Civ. Proc. Code § 425.16 et seq. The Institute for Free Speech grades various state anti-SLAPP laws, based on the level of speech protection they offer and the costs imposed on frivolous lawsuits. See David Keating, Helen Knowles-Gardner & Dan Greenberg, Anti-SLAPP Statutes: 2025 Report Card, Inst. for Free Speech (Aug. 25, 2025), https://www.ifs.org/anti-slapp-report/#daa09b11-1012-4762-808c-f2687ea5717d [https://perma.cc/ZBV9-XM29].

      [159].     For examples of how uneven anti-SLAPP protections shape litigation strategies, see Almánzar v. Kebe, No. 1:19-cv-01301-WMR, 2021 WL 5027798 (N.D. Ga. Mar. 21, 2019) (showing a defamation action brought by Cardi B against a blogger in Georgia, which at the time had a relatively weak anti-SLAPP law lacking fee-shifting provisions); Palin v. N.Y. Times Co., 940 F.3d 804, 809–10 (2d Cir. 2019) (permitting former Governor Sarah Palin’s defamation suit to proceed in New York federal court before that state adopted broader anti-SLAPP protections); Marshall County Coal Co. v. John Oliver, No. 17-C-124, 2018 WL 11243736 (W. Va. Cir. Ct. Marshall Cnty. Mar. 15, 2018) (showing a coal company suing comedian John Oliver in West Virginia, a jurisdiction with no anti-SLAPP statute; the court granted defendant’s motion to dismiss).

      [160].     Section 230, Elec. Frontier Found., https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230 [https://perma.cc/UBS2-BTTT].

      [161].     Courts typically apply the Barnes v. Yahoo! test to understand whether a platform is immune from liability under Section 230. First, notably, the company must be a “provider or user of an interactive computer service” as defined by the statute (one that “provides or enables computer access by multiple users to a computer server”). Second, the plaintiff must seek to treat the platform as the publisher or speaker of the content in question. And finally, the information must be provided by another party or user, and not the platform itself. Barnes v. Yahoo!, Inc., 570 F.3d 1096 (9th Cir. 2009).

      [162].     See generally Eric Goldman, Why Section 230 Is Better than the First Amendment, 95 Notre Dame L. Rev. Reflection 33 (2019).

      [163].     See generally Jeff Kosseff, The Twenty-Six Words that Created the Internet (2019).

      [164].     Jeff Kosseff, Defending Section 230: The Value of Intermediary Immunity, 15 J. Tech. L. & Pol’y 123, 136 (2010).

      [165].     Valerie C. Brannon & Eric N. Holmes, Section 230: An Overview, Cong. Rsch. Serv. (Jan. 4, 2024), https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R46751 [https://perma.cc/XY89-HLUN].

      [166].     See Int’l Shoe Co. v. Washington, 326 U.S. 310, 316 (1945).

      [167].     Brian E. Daughdrill, Personal Jurisdiction and the Internet: Waiting for the Other Shoe to Drop on First Amendment Concerns, 51 Mercer L. Rev. 919, 920 (2000).

      [168].     Courts have long struggled to adapt personal jurisdiction principles to the unique challenges posed by the internet or have continued to apply Calder and Keeton to online speech. Both pathways insufficiently capture the realities of online communication. In determining jurisdiction over activities occurring in cyberspace, courts have attempted to formulate new rules (like the once embraced but now abandoned Zippo “sliding scale” test). See, e.g., Bunmi Awoyemi, Zippo Is Dying, Should It Be Dead?: The Exercise of Personal Jurisdiction by U.S. Federal Courts over Non-Domiciliary Defendants in Trademark Infringement Lawsuits Arising Out of Cyberspace, 9 Marq. Intell. Prop. L. Rev. 37, 62 (2005) (stating that the abandonment of Zippo is in part due to courts’ increasing understanding of the internet). That said, the Fifth Circuit in Johnson v. HuffingtonPost.com did use the Zippo framework as a threshold to determine the interactivity of a website. See Johnson v. HuffingtonPost.com, 21 F.4th 314, 318 (5th Cir. 2021). Though it is largely abandoned, it is not a complete dead letter.

      [169].     See Young v. New Haven Advoc., 315 F.3d 256, 263–64 (4th Cir. 2002); Sarah H. Ludington, Aiming at the Wrong Target: The “Audience Targeting” Test for Personal Jurisdiction in Internet Defamation Cases, 73 Ohio St. L.J. 541, 542–44 (2012).

      [170].     See Ellen Smith Yost, Tweet, Post, Share . . . Get Haled into Court? Calder Minimum Contacts Analysis in Social Media Defamation Cases, 73 SMU L. Rev. 693, 707 (2020).

      [171].     See id. at 706–08.

      [172].     See Calder v. Jones, 465 U.S. 783, 788–89 (1984).

      [173].     See Keeton v. Hustler Magazine, Inc., 465 U.S. 770, 772 (1984); Walden v. Fiore, 571 U.S. 277, 285–91 (2014).

      [174].     Furthermore, the limits of the First Amendment are especially felt online. See, e.g., Lyrissa Barnett Lidsky, Silencing John Doe: Defamation & Discourse in Cyberspace, 49 Duke L.J. 855, 870–71 (2000) (“Although one might intuitively expect the First Amendment to prevent powerful plaintiffs from silencing their critics, the First Amendment extends only limited protections in such circumstances.”).

[175].    Young v. New Haven Advoc., 315 F.3d 256, 263 (4th Cir. 2002) (“The overall content of both websites is decidedly local, and neither newspaper’s website contains advertisements aimed at a Virginia audience. For example, the website that distributes the Courant, ctnow.com, provides access to local (Connecticut) weather and traffic information and links to websites for the University of Connecticut and Connecticut state government. The Advocate’s website features stories focusing on New Haven, such as one entitled ‘The Best of New Haven.’ In sum, it appears that these newspapers maintain their websites to serve local readers in Connecticut, to expand the reach of their papers within their local markets, and to provide their local markets with a place for classified ads. The websites are not designed to attract or serve a Virginia audience.”).

      [176].     Id.

      [177].     293 F.3d 707, 714 (4th Cir. 2002).

      [178].     Young, 315 F.3d at 258–59 (“Our recent decision in ALS Scan, Inc. v. Digital Service Consultants, Inc., 293 F.3d 707 (4th Cir. 2002), supplies the standard for determining a court’s authority to exercise personal jurisdiction over an out-of-state person who places information on the [i]nternet. Applying that standard, we hold that a court in Virginia cannot constitutionally exercise jurisdiction over the Connecticut-based newspaper defendants because they did not manifest an intent to aim their websites or the posted articles at a Virginia audience.”).

      [179].     Id. at 256.

      [180].     Id. at 258–59.

      [181].     Id. at 263.

      [182].     293 F.3d 707 (4th Cir. 2002).

      [183].     Young, 315 F.3d at 263 (quoting ALS Scan, Inc. v. Digital Service Consultants, Inc., 293 F.3d 707, 714 (4th Cir. 2002)).

      [184].     See, e.g., Johnson v. Arden, 614 F.3d 785 (8th Cir. 2010).

      [185].     Id. at 788.

      [186].     Id. at 796.

      [187].     Id. at 797.

      [188].     946 F.2d 1384 (8th Cir. 1991).

      [189].     Id. at 1390.

      [190].     See, e.g., Lindgren v. GDT, LLC, 312 F. Supp. 2d 1125, 1129 (S.D. Iowa 2004).

      [191].     317 F.3d 467, 469 (5th Cir. 2002) (“The article alleges that a broad politically motivated conspiracy among senior members of the Reagan Administration lay behind their wilful failure to stop the bombing despite clear advance warnings. Further, Lidov charged that the government proceeded to cover up its receipt of advance warning and repeatedly misled the public about the facts. Specifically, the article singles out Oliver ‘Buck’ Revell, then Associate Deputy Director of the FBI, for severe criticism, accusing him of complicity in the conspiracy and coverup.”).

      [192].     Id. at 469.

      [193].     Id. at 473.

      [194].     Id. at 473–74.

      [195].     21 F.4th 314, 318 (5th Cir. 2021).

      [196].     Johnson relied on four separate business activities to argue for jurisdiction in Texas, on the basis of purposeful availment: visibility of the website in Texas; HuffPost’s sale of an ad-free experience and merchandise to “everyone, including Texans”; the fact that Texas-based advertisers had contracted with HuffPost to show ads on the site; and lastly, that “HuffPost collects information about its viewers, including their location, to enable advertisers to show them relevant ads.” Id. at 317.

      [197].     Alexander Nazaryan, Why Did Right-Wing Troll Charles C. Johnson Want to Meet with Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross?, Huffington Post (May 14, 2019), https://www.huffpost.com/entry/why-did-right-wing-troll-charles-c-johnson-want-to-meet-with-commerce-secretary-wilbur-ross_n_5cdaedbfe4b0615b081a231c [https://perma.cc/EL8Y-486A].

      [198].     Johnson, 21 F. 4th at 316–17.

      [199].     Id. at 326–27.

      [200].     Id. at 326.

      [201].     Id.

      [202].     Id.

      [203].     Id. at 318 (citing Calder v. Jones, 465 U.S. 783, 789 (1984)).

      [204].     Id. at 325.

      [205].     Id.

      [206].     Id. at 320 (citing Ford Motor Co. v. Montana Eighth Jud. Dist. Ct., 141 S. Ct. 1017, 1025 (2021)).

      [207].     646 N.W.2d 527 (Minn. 2002).

      [208].     Id. at 535.

      [209].     Id.

      [210].     72 F.4th 1085, 1093 (9th Cir. 2023).

      [211].     Id. at 1093.

      [212].     No. 22 C 5101, 2023 WL 5277888, at *5 (N.D. Ill. Aug. 15, 2023).

      [213].     No. 20-10980-FDS, 2020 WL 6806433, at *12 (D. Mass. Nov. 18, 2020).

      [214].     Sarah H. Ludington, Aiming at the Wrong Target: The “Audience Targeting” Test for Personal Jurisdiction in Internet Defamation Cases, 73 Ohio St. L.J. 541, 559 (2012) (emphasis added).

      [215].     Id. at 572–74.

      [216].     Id. at 574.

      [217].     See Young v. New Haven Advoc., 315 F.3d 256, 263 (4th Cir. 2002) (focusing on whether the articles concerned Connecticut prisons rather than Virginia audiences); Revell v. Lidov, 317 F.3d 467, 473–74 (5th Cir. 2002) (looking to the absence of Texas references or sources); Johnson v. TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc., 21 F.4th 314, 326–27 (5th Cir. 2021) (emphasizing that the article contained no Texas-focused subject matter).

      [218].     See Yost, supra note 170, at 707–08.

      [219].     123 F. App’x 675, 680 (6th Cir. 2005).

      [220].     Id. at 679.

      [221].     988 F.3d 889, 892–93 (6th Cir. 2021).

[222]. 85 F.4th 429, 435 (6th Cir. 2023).

      [223].     Griffin is known for being active on social media. See, e.g., Donie O’Sullivan, Kathy Griffin Suspended from Twitter for Impersonating Elon Musk, CNN (Nov. 7, 2022), https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/07/tech/kathy-griffin-twitter/index.html [https://perma.cc/DX9R-3RSA]; Brandon Ambrosino, Kathy Griffin Tweeted Something Stupid. We Should Forgive Her., Wash. Post (Oct. 27, 2021), https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2017/05/31/kathy-griffin-tweeted-something-stupid-we-should-forgive-her/ [https://perma.cc/ST4L-J8C9].

      [224].     988 F.3d 889, 892–93 (6th Cir. 2021).

      [225].     Id. at 892.

      [226].     Id.

      [227].     Id. at 893.

      [228].     Id.

      [229].     Id.

      [230].     Id. at 906 (quoting Walden v. Fiore, 571 U.S. 277, 289 (2014)).

      [231].     Id. at 905 (quoting Walden, 571 U.S. at 285).

      [232].     Id. at 906.

      [233].     Id. (quoting Walden, 571 U.S. at 290).

      [234].     Calder v. Jones, 465 U.S. 783, 788–89 (1984).

      [235].     Blessing, 988 F.3d at 904.

      [236].     85 F.4th 429, 431 (6th Cir. 2023).

      [237].     Id.

      [238].     Kathy Griffin (@kathygriffin), Twitter (Apr. 25, 2021, at 01:45 ET), https://twitter.com/kathygriffin/status/1386556994560020481 [https://perma.cc/ENJ3-WZ77]; Griffin, 85 F.4th at 432.

      [239].     Griffin, 85 F.4th at 432.

      [240].     Id.

      [241].     Id.

      [242].     Id. at 435.

      [243].     Id. at 433.

      [244].     See Neal v. Janssen, 270 F.3d 328, 332 (6th Cir. 2001) (“The acts of making phone calls and sending facsimiles into the forum, standing alone, may be sufficient to confer jurisdiction.”); Tamburo v. Dworkin, 601 F.3d 693, 707 (7th Cir. 2010) (finding jurisdiction proper where posts had “the express goal of inflicting commercial and reputational harm” on an Illinois business).

      [245].     Johnson v. Griffin, 85 F.4th 429, 433–34 (6th Cir. 2023).

      [246].     Blessing v. Chandrasekhar, 988 F.3d 889, 906 (6th Cir. 2021).

      [247].     Griffin, 85 F.4th at 434.

      [248].     Id.

      [249].     See Dudnikov v. Chalk & Vermilion Fine Arts, Inc., 514 F.3d 1063, 1075–77 (10th Cir. 2008) (finding purposeful availment where defendants intentionally interfered with a Colorado auction through direct communications).

      [250].     Griffin, 85 F.4th at 435.

      [251].     Calder v. Jones, 465 U.S. 783, 789 (1984).

      [252].     Griffin, 85 F.4th at 435.

      [253].     See Spencer, supra note 97, at 223; Danielle Keats Citron, Cyber Civil Rights, 89 B.U. L. Rev. 61, 118–19 (2009).

      [254].     140 F.4th 805, 811–12 (6th Cir. 2025).

      [255].     576 F. Supp. 3d 901, 904–06 (N.D. Ill. 2021).

      [256].     Id. at 905.

      [257].     Id. at 912.

      [258].     Id. at 905–07.

      [259].     Cf. Tamburo v. Dworkin, 601 F.3d 693, 706–07 (7th Cir. 2010) (considering a coordinated “doxing” campaign and encouraging harassment as part of the jurisdictional analysis).

      [260].     Majumdar, 576 F. Supp. 3d at 911.

      [261].     Id. at 911 (“Defendant’s distinction makes no difference. The fact that a Twitter mention or Facebook tag is a means of addressing a public rather than private communication to a particular user does not make it any less an intentional, direct contact. When a Facebook user is tagged or a Twitter user is mentioned, the user receives a notification directing his or her attention to the post, just as an email user receives a notification when he or she receives an email.”).

      [262].     Id. (quoting Cardno ChemRisk, LLC v. Foytlin, No. 2014-3932 BLS1, 2015 WL 9275648, at *2 (Mass. Super. Ct. Oct. 26, 2015)).

      [263].     Id.

      [264].     Id.

      [265].     Id. at 911–13.

      [266].     See Fielding v. Hubert Burda Media, Inc., 415 F.3d 419, 426 (5th Cir. 2005) (holding that the plaintiff must show “that (1) the subject matter of and (2) the sources relied upon for the article were in the forum state” to establish jurisdiction).

      [267].     Id.

      [268].     A University professor posted an article online suggesting that a former FBI official, residing in Texas, had advance knowledge of the Lockerbie bombing. 317 F.3d 467, 469 (5th Cir. 2002). The court rejected jurisdiction because “the article written by Lidov contains no reference to Texas, nor does it refer to the Texas activities of Revell, and it was not directed at Texas readers as distinguished from readers in other states.” Id. at 473. Furthermore, “Texas was not the focal point of the article or the harm suffered . . . .” Id. at 474.

      [269].     Fielding, 415 F.3d at 424.

      [270].     Id. at 426.

      [271].     Id.

      [272].     Id.

      [273].     Id.

      [274].     See Yost, supra note 170, at 708.

      [275].     615 F.3d 374, 377–78 (5th Cir. 2010).

      [276].     Id. at 378.

      [277].     Id. at 378 (citing Walden v. Fiore, 571 U.S. 277, 285 (2014)).

      [278].     Id. at 380.

      [279].     Blessing v. Chandrasekhar, 988 F.3d 889, 906 (6th Cir. 2021).

      [280].     85 F.4th 429, 434 (6th Cir. 2023).

      [281].     Majumdar v. Fair, 576 F. Supp. 3d 901, 911 (N.D. Ill. 2021).

      [282].     465 U.S. 783, 788–89 (1984).

      [283].     Keeton v. Hustler Magazine, Inc., 465 U.S. 770, 773–74 (1984).

      [284].     Griffin, 85 F.4th at 434; Majumdar, 576 F. Supp. 3d at 911. Not all courts treat tags as jurisdiction-conferring contacts, however. See Torre v. Kardooni, No. 22-4693, 2022 WL 17812193, at ECF No. 22 (D.N.J. Nov. 29, 2022) (tagging is insufficient); Brown v. Dash, No. 20-10980-FDS, 2020 WL 6806433, at *10–13 (D. Mass. Nov. 18, 2020); Cityzenith Holdings, Inc. v. Liddell, No. 22 C 5101, 2023 WL 5277888, at *6–9 (N.D. Ill. Aug. 15, 2023).

      [285].     Calder, 465 U.S. at 790.

      [286].     Young v. New Haven Advoc., 315 F.3d 256, 263 (4th Cir. 2002).

      [287].     See Courtney Love Cobain v. Gordon & Holmes, BC525857 (Cal. Super. Ct. Oct. 25, 2013); Martha Neil, Defense Verdict for Courtney Love in ‘Twibel’ Case Brought by Her Former Lawyer, ABA J. (Jan. 27, 2014), https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/defense_verdict_for_courtney_love_in_twibel_trial_brought_by_her_former_law/ [https://perma.cc/KKP5-PQTX].

      [288].     Young, 315 F.3d at 263–64.

      [289].     Id. at 263–64.

      [290].     Johnson v. Griffin, 85 F.4th 429, 431 (6th Cir. 2023).

      [291].     Torre v. Kardooni, No. 22-4693, 2022 WL 17812193, at ECF No. 22 (D.N.J. Nov. 29, 2022); Brown v. Dash, No. 20-10980-FDS, 2020 WL 6806433, at *10–13 (D. Mass. Nov. 18, 2020); Cityzenith Holdings, Inc. v. Liddell, No. 22 C 5101, 2023 WL 5277888, at *6–9 (N.D. Ill. Aug. 15, 2023).

      [292].     Int’l Shoe Co. v. Washington, 326 U.S. 310, 316 (1945).

      [293].     See, e.g., Lidsky, supra note 174, at 863–64; Citron, supra note 253, at 107–08.

      [294].     See Reno v. Am. C.L. Union, 521 U.S. 844, 871–72 (1997) (striking down provisions of the Communications Decency Act in part because the vague scope of “indecent” and “patently offensive” content risked chilling lawful online speech).

      [295].     See Grayned v. City of Rockford, 408 U.S. 104, 108–09 (1972) (warning that vague laws “trap the innocent by not providing fair warning” and “inhibit[] the exercise” of protected freedoms).

      [296].     465 U.S. 783, 790 (1984).

      [297].     See Citron, supra note 253, at 107–08; Danielle Keats Citron, Civil Rights in Our Information Age, 91 B.U. L. Rev. 101, 107–08 (2011).

      [298].     Cf. Asahi Metal Indus. Co. v. Superior Ct., 480 U.S. 102, 112 (1987) (plurality opinion) (demanding “something more” than mere awareness of a product’s distribution).

      [299].     See Young v. New Haven Advoc., 315 F.3d 256, 263–64 (4th Cir. 2002).

      [300].     Johnson v. TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc., 21 F.4th 314, 323 (5th Cir. 2021).

      [301].     465 U.S. 770, 780 n.9 (1984).

      [302].     See Burger King Corp. v. Rudzewicz, 471 U.S. 462, 471–72 (1985).

[303].     Int’l Shoe Co. v. Washington, 326 U.S. 310, 316 (1945).

      [304].     World-Wide Volkswagen Corp. v. Woodson, 444 U.S. 286, 293 (1980).

      [305].     See Lidsky, supra note 174, at 863–64.

      [306].     See Int’l Shoe, 326 U.S. at 316.

      [307].     85 F.4th 431, 434 (6th Cir. 2023).

      [308].     988 F.3d 889, 906 (6th Cir. 2021).

      [309].     See The 2023 World Press Freedom Index Highlights the Increasing Threat to Press Freedom Worldwide, Free Press Unlimited (May 3, 2023), https://www.freepressunlimited.org/en/current/2023-world-press-freedom-index-highlights-increasing-threat-press-freedom-worldwide [https://perma.cc/6K6G-3V32].

      [310].     See, e.g., Christine Hauser, ABC’s ‘Pink Slime’ Report Tied to $177 Million in Settlement Costs, N.Y. Times (Aug. 10, 2017), https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/10/business/pink-slime-disney-abc.html [https://perma.cc/Y3S6-MSN6].

      [311].     Karen Havilan, Jurisdiction Meets the Press: First Amendment Considerations in Jurisdictional Analysis, 9 Hastings Const. L.Q. 975, 978 (1982).

      [312].     See, e.g., Saachi Nagar, Dylan Berger & Gin Williams, The Death of Print, C Mag. (Mar. 1, 2024), https://cmagazine.org/2024/03/01/the-death-of-print/ [https://perma.cc/QG7H-92W7].

      [313].     President Donald J. Trump has repeatedly deployed defamation suits to contest—and at times chill—unfavorable coverage by major news organizations. See, e.g., Trump v. Am. Broad. Cos., Inc., 742 F. Supp. 3d 1168 (S.D. Fla. 2024) (regarding claims arising from George Stephanopoulos’s on-air description of the Carroll verdict; motion to dismiss denied and the matter resolved by settlement with ABC paying $15 million toward Trump’s presidential library and issuing an apology); Trump v. CBS Broad. Inc., No. 2:24-cv-00236-Z, 2024 WL 6069115 (N.D. Tex. Dec. 6, 2024) (alleging deceptive editing of Vice President Harris’s interview; case stayed pending settlement and then terminated, with Paramount paying $16 million in July 2025); Trump v. Dow Jones & Co., No. 1:25-cv-23232, 2025 WL 2019216 (S.D. Fla. July 18, 2025) (regarding libel claims over a Wall Street Journal story concerning an alleged “Epstein” birthday note; seeking $10 billion in damages; defendants have moved to dismiss and litigation is ongoing); Trump v. New York Times Co., No. 8:25-cv-02487, 2025 WL 2680597 (M.D. Fla. Sep. 15, 2025) (regarding a suit against The New York Times, several reporters, and Penguin Random House seeking $15 billion; struck under Rule 8 for being prolix and “improper,” with leave to refile within twenty-eight days).