But he rejected much of the heart of Fox’s defense: that the First Amendment protected the statements made on its air alleging that the election had somehow been stolen. Fox has argued that it was merely reporting on allegations of voter fraud as inherently newsworthy and that any statements its hosts made about supposed fraud were covered under the Constitution as opinion.

“It appears oxymoronic to call the statements ‘opinions' while also asserting the statements are newsworthy allegations and/or substantially accurate reports of official proceedings,” Judge Davis said.

For example, in a “Lou Dobbs Tonight” broadcast on Nov. 24, 2020, Mr. Dobbs said: “I think many Americans have given no thought to electoral fraud that would be perpetrated through electronic voting; that is, these machines, these electronic voting companies including Dominion, prominently Dominion, at least in the suspicions of a lot of Americans.”

The judge said that statement was asserting a fact, rather than an opinion, about Dominion.

Under defamation law, Dominion must prove that Fox either knowingly spread false information or did so with reckless disregard for the truth, meaning that it had reason to believe that the information it broadcast was false.

Numerous legal experts have said that Dominion has presented ample evidence that Fox hosts and producers were aware of what they were doing.