You may remember this story which became news last November. An author for Deadspin, the Gawker spawned sports site, wrote an article accusing a 9-year-old boy of racism for wearing blackface. Here's a photo of the boy whose name is Holden Armenta.

Turns out that Holden Armenta, the young Chiefs fan falsely accused of racism for his costume and wearing “blackface”, is a Native that belongs to the Chumash Tribe.

His father is a member of the Chumash Tribe’s board in Santa Ynez.

😅 pic.twitter.com/ZKBxEAyHTv

— Garbage Human (@GarbageHuman24) November 29, 2023

Since Holden was wearing black and red makeup, Deadspin took a screengrab showing only the black half of his face and added it to the article by writer Carron Philips.

“The NFL needs to speak out against the Kansas City Chiefs fan in Black face, Native headdress,” the headline on the article reads. “They’re doubling up on the racism,” a subhead reads. “Are you going to say anything, Roger Goodell?” — a reference to the NFL commissioner.

In the article, Phillips wrote that the boy had “found a way to hate black people and the Native American at the same time.” He suggested that the boy had been taught “hatred” by his parents.

As you can see in the tweet above, Holden was not wearing blackface and also has Native ancestry himself. The family explained all of this and asked Deadspin repeatedly to take down the misleading story. The site did change the headline but wouldn't take the story down so the family eventually sued. 

In March of this year, Deadspin was sold to another company which fired all of its remaining employees and started over. Nevertheless, the site has been fighting the lawsuit in court, arguing that they could not be sued for defamation over an opinion piece. Today a judge ruled that the lawsuit would not be dismissed as Deadspin's lawyers had asked, saying claims made in the piece were "provable false assertions."

“Deadspin published an image of a child displaying his passionate fandom as a backdrop for its critique of the NFL’s diversity efforts and, in its description of the child, crossed the fine line protecting its speech from defamation claims,” the judge wrote.

“Having reviewed the complaint, the court concludes that Deadspin’s statements accusing H.A. of wearing black face and Native headdress ‘to hate black people and the Native American at the same time,’ and that he was taught this hatred by his parents, are provable false assertions of fact and are therefore actionable,” Lugg added.

Wouldn't it be nice if we could just sue every writer who spends his time falsely accusing people of racism? I think it would. But many of the people who get accused are arguably already public figures so the standard for proving defamation is much higher. But that's clearly no the case when the person being defamed is a young child.

Philips account on X seems to have been active earlier today but as of now his tweets are protected. I'm guessing he's getting a bit of backlash over this story. It's well deserved. Here's an interview with Holden and his father from 10 months ago.