A pro-abortion Notre Dame professor has filed a defamation lawsuit against student journalists on campus who have reported on her activism, which included offering to help students obtain abortions.
Tamara Kay, a sociology and global-affairs professor, filed the suit against the Irish Rover, the school’s independent conservative student newspaper, claiming that two of its articles contained “defamatory and false statements.”
This week, the Rover plans to file an anti-SLAPP motion to dismiss, student editor Joe DeReuil tells National Review.
Kay’s lawyer first sent a letter of intent to sue for defamation in early April and demanded that the student paper retract the articles and apologize to Kay.
Kay filed the defamation suit the next month. The complaint takes issue with an October 2022 article written by DeReuil, “Keough School Professor Offers Abortion Access to Students.” However, the complaint fails to cite any specific examples of false statements included in the piece.
DeReuil reported on a panel event at the university titled “Post-Roe America: Making Intersectional Feminist Sense of Abortion Bans,” in which four Notre Dame professors, including Kay, argued that Indiana’s new pro-life law, S.B. 1, would be harmful to “marginalized groups.” (An Indiana court temporarily blocked the bill one day after the panel.)
“For me, abortion is a policy issue. And yes, my view runs afoul of Church teaching, but in other areas, my positions are perfectly aligned [with the Church],” Kay told the Rover after the panel.
On October 13, one day after the article was published, Kay claimed in a tweet that there was “absolutely no interview” with the Rover. However, DeReuil sent National Review a recording of his conversation with Kay in which he clearly identifies himself as the editor of the Rover before asking her several questions. Kay told The Cut that while DeReuil introduced himself, she did not see him recording or taking notes and did not believe she was being interviewed for a story.
Kay shared a number of pro-abortion resources on her Twitter using the handle “Dr. Tamara Kay — Notre Dame abortion rights expert.” She offered to “help as a private citizen if you have issues w access or cost. DM me [sic].”
She also posted a sign on her office door on campus that said, “This is a SAFE SPACE to get help and information on ALL Healthcare issues and access — confidentially with care and compassion,” according to the student paper’s report.
The note included her non-Notre Dame email where students could reach her, as well a letter “J,” which signaled that she is willing to help students access abortion. “We are here (as private citizens, not representatives of ND) to help you access healthcare when you need it, and we are prepared in every way. Look for the “J”, Spread the word to students!” Kay explained in a social media post cited by the Rover.
“These professors, including Kay, offer help in obtaining both Plan B ‘morning after’ pills and ‘Plan C’ abortion pills, which are efficacious up to 12 weeks of pregnancy,” the article adds.
After DeReuil’s article was published — and quickly went viral in national conservative media — Kay backtracked and said her efforts were undertaken as a “private citizen.” She changed her Twitter display name to “Dr. Tamara Kay — Abortion Rights & Policy Scholar” and updated her bio to read, “I don’t speak for my employer (duh!).” She also removed the signs from her office door and deleted her tweets about helping students access abortion.
The lawsuit largely centers on a March 2023 article from the Rover written by student journalist Luke Thompson: “Tamara Kay Explains Herself to Notre Dame Democrats.”
The complaint objects to a line in the article that summarized the October 2022 report by saying that Kay was “posting offers to procure abortion pills on her office door.”
Despite the suit suggesting this is false, a Notre Dame spokesman told The Cut earlier this year that in the case of the sign “a reasonable person could understand Professor Kay to be giving medical advice (on becoming ‘unpregnant’ by taking abortion pills without knowing any details about an individual student’s health). This seemed unwise from both the perspective of faculty members and students.”
The suit also cites another portion of the article that reads, “Another student asked how Kay—as someone who supports abortion— ended up at Notre Dame, a Catholic university that ‘recognizes and upholds the sanctity of human life from conception to natural death,’ as stated by President Jenkins in Notre Dame’s Institutional Statement Supporting the Choice for Life.” She claimed the question was never asked.
A recording of the event obtained by National Review confirms a student asked Kay how she ended up at Notre Dame and how her experiences and beliefs affected her coming there.
The suit alleges that in the article she was “falsely stated to have said that, ‘if you have that academic freedom, you should use it.” In a recording of the event, Kay can be heard saying in reference to academic freedom, “If you have it—” before playfully cutting off, implying that students should put academic freedom to use.
Finally, the suit argues against the article’s claim that “She acknowledges that not all the students in the crowd could be as forward in their pro-abortion activities as she is: I can’t impose that on you… but I’m doing me, and you should do you.” The complaint claims she never said that.
Again, the recording revealed Kay said a similar statement, if not in those exact words: “I’m doing me and other folks can do them.”
The suit claims the two articles are “defamatory per se and establish a willful intent to portray Dr. Kay in a negative and disparaging manner consistent with a motive of bad faith and a reckless disregard for truth and falsity.”
Kay “has been harassed, threatened, and experienced damage to her residential property. She also has suffered mentally and emotionally and experienced and continues to experience mental anguish and fear for her safety,” the complaint adds.
The lawsuit requests a judgment “in an amount that will fully compensate her for her damages and loss and all other proper relief on the premises” and argues that an award of punitive damages “is warranted to serve the public interest and to deter such conduct in the future.”
Request for comment to Kay’s university email was met with an automatically generated response that read, “This account has been changed, because of this:” along with a link to an article in The Cut that details her story. The outlet frames it as “The Holy War Against One Pro-Abortion-Rights Professor” and details harassment Kay has allegedly faced over her pro-abortion advocacy.
DeReuil, a rising senior studying philosophy and classics who has been writing for the Rover since his freshman year, told National Review he is “not worried at all about the lawsuit.”
“I feel very confident that everything that we said in both articles is true. So I don’t have any fear about the lawsuit but it definitely is an odd situation to have a professor at a university — a tenured professor at a university coming after a student publication,” he said.
Even after The Cut article referred to his reporting as “a single deceptive headline” that “appeared in a conservative student publication that would set in motion a monthslong campaign of harassment against Kay,” he said he has received mostly supportive emails, many from alumni of the university who are concerned about Notre Dame’s Catholic identity.