California Anti-SLAPP Motion: Deadlines, Costs, and Appeals

A California anti-SLAPP motion is a special motion to strike, filed under Code of Civil Procedure Section 425.16, that lets a defendant get a lawsuit dismissed early when the claims target speech or petitioning activity protected by the First Amendment.¹ The Legislature built the statute as a shield against lawsuits designed to chill public participation rather than remedy real legal wrongs, and courts treat it as a powerful one. A defendant who wins the motion gets the offending claims stricken and recovers attorney fees.

What Activity the Motion Protects

The statute reaches four categories of conduct tied to the rights of free speech and petition.¹

Statements or writings made in a legislative, executive, judicial, or other official proceeding. Testimony, court filings, and letters to regulators fall here.
Statements or writings made about an issue under consideration by a government body, such as comments on a proposed zoning change or a pending regulatory action.
Statements made in a public forum or any place open to the public on an issue of public interest. Online reviews, social media posts, public protests, and community meeting comments are common examples.
Any other conduct furthering free speech or petition rights on a public issue. This catch-all is the broadest category.

In practice, the motion shows up most often in defamation cases over newspaper articles, online reviews, and website posts. It also surfaces when a business sues a critic, when a landlord sues a tenant who complained to a government agency, or when an organization sues protesters. The common thread is a lawsuit whose real function is to punish someone for speaking or petitioning on a matter of public concern.

How the Court Decides the Motion

Courts run a two-step analysis, and the burden shifts between the parties.¹

First, the defendant has to show that the challenged claim arises from conduct the statute protects. That means pointing to specific speech or petitioning activity and tying it to one of the four categories. Fail this step and the motion is denied, with the lawsuit proceeding normally.

Clear it, and the burden flips. The plaintiff then has to show a “probability of prevailing” on the claim by putting forward admissible evidence, meaning declarations, documents, and similar proof supporting every element of the cause of action. The court accepts the plaintiff’s evidence at face value and looks at the defendant’s evidence only to see whether it defeats the claim as a matter of law. A plaintiff who can’t demonstrate at least minimal merit loses the claim.¹

When a Claim Mixes Protected and Unprotected Conduct

Complaints rarely sort themselves neatly. A single cause of action might rest partly on protected speech and partly on conduct that has nothing to do with speech. The California Supreme Court addressed this in Baral v. Schnitt, holding that an anti-SLAPP motion can target specific allegations within a cause of action, not just entire claims.²

Under Baral, the defendant identifies the allegations based on protected activity, the court temporarily sets aside allegations based on unprotected conduct, and the plaintiff has to show a probability of prevailing on the protected-activity allegations specifically. Allegations that don’t clear that bar get stricken. The rest of the claim survives. A plaintiff can’t shield weak speech-based allegations by bundling them with stronger claims resting on other conduct.²

Filing Deadline and the Automatic Discovery Stay

A defendant generally has 60 days from service of the complaint to file the motion. Courts have discretion to allow late filings for good cause. Once the motion is filed, the clerk schedules a hearing within 30 days of service, though crowded court calendars often push the actual date out.¹

An amended complaint does not automatically reset the clock. In Newport Harbor Ventures, LLC v. Morris Cerullo World Evangelism, the California Supreme Court held that a defendant must move to strike a cause of action within 60 days of the earliest complaint containing that claim. The window reopens only for genuinely new causes of action, or for existing claims that new allegations first bring within the statute’s reach.³ Miss the deadline on the original complaint and an amendment won’t rescue the motion.

Filing the motion freezes all discovery in the case. The stay kicks in the moment the motion is filed and continues until notice of entry of the court’s order, not just until the ruling itself. Discovery is expensive, and a SLAPP plaintiff often counts on those costs to pressure the defendant into silence. Freezing the process removes that leverage. A party who needs specific discovery while the motion is pending can ask the court for it, but must file a separate motion and show good cause.¹

Lawsuits the Motion Cannot Reach

Not every speech-adjacent lawsuit is subject to an anti-SLAPP motion. The statute itself carves out government enforcement actions brought by the Attorney General, Insurance Commissioner, a district attorney, or a city attorney acting as a public prosecutor.¹

Section 425.17 adds two broader exemptions. The first covers lawsuits brought solely in the public interest or on behalf of the general public, provided three conditions are all met: the plaintiff seeks no personal relief beyond what any member of the public would receive, the case would enforce an important right benefiting a large group, and private enforcement is necessary but places a financial burden on the plaintiff disproportionate to any personal stake. A claim for attorney fees or penalties does not count as personal relief.⁴

The second exemption covers commercial speech. A business that primarily sells goods or services cannot use an anti-SLAPP motion to escape a lawsuit targeting factual claims it made about its own or a competitor’s products, where the statements were made to promote sales or delivery of those goods or services and the intended audience is actual or potential customers.⁴ Companies can’t use free-speech doctrine to shield deceptive advertising.

What Winning (or Losing) Costs

A defendant who wins an anti-SLAPP motion is entitled to recover attorney fees and costs. The award is mandatory, not discretionary.¹ Filing a meritless SLAPP suit risks more than losing the case. It risks paying for the other side’s lawyers.

Courts calculate the award using the lodestar method: hours reasonably spent on the motion multiplied by a reasonable hourly rate. In appropriate cases, courts can apply a multiplier reflecting the complexity of the issues, the quality of the work, or the risk taken by counsel on a contingent basis. Enhancements aren’t automatic and can’t be used to punish the losing side.

One carve-out: a prevailing defendant cannot recover fees if the underlying lawsuit was brought under certain government transparency statutes, including the California Public Records Act and open meeting laws.¹

For plaintiffs, the picture is different. A plaintiff who defeats the motion recovers fees only if the court finds the defendant’s motion was frivolous or filed solely to cause delay. That’s a high bar. It requires showing that no reasonable attorney would have filed the motion under the circumstances.¹

Appealing the Ruling

An order granting or denying an anti-SLAPP motion is immediately appealable in California state court. Code of Civil Procedure Section 904.1 lists these orders among those that can be appealed right away, without waiting for the case to end.⁵ That’s unusual for a pretrial ruling and reflects the Legislature’s view that getting anti-SLAPP decisions right matters enough to justify the immediate trip to the Court of Appeal.

Federal court works differently. In October 2025, the Ninth Circuit ruled in Gopher Media LLC v. Melone that denial of an anti-SLAPP motion is not immediately appealable in federal court under the collateral order doctrine, overruling earlier circuit precedent. Whether the motion is granted or denied, no interlocutory appeal is available as of right, and a party has to wait until the case concludes to challenge the ruling.⁶

Suing Back After Winning

A defendant who wins an anti-SLAPP motion and gets the underlying suit dismissed may have grounds for a “SLAPPback”: a malicious prosecution or abuse-of-process claim against whoever filed the original SLAPP. Section 425.18 treats these follow-up cases differently from ordinary malicious prosecution claims.⁷

A defendant facing a SLAPPback has 120 days to file a special motion to strike instead of the usual 60, and the court can extend that window to six months or beyond in extraordinary circumstances. The mandatory fee-shifting and automatic discovery stay from the regular anti-SLAPP statute do not apply. And a defendant in the SLAPPback cannot file an anti-SLAPP motion at all if the original SLAPP suit was illegal as a matter of law.⁷

Using the Motion in Federal Court

California’s anti-SLAPP statute can be invoked in federal court when jurisdiction rests on diversity of citizenship. The Ninth Circuit established this in United States ex rel. Newsham v. Lockheed Missiles & Space Co., holding that the statute’s core provisions don’t conflict with the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and that refusing to apply them would encourage forum shopping.⁸

The federal version has real limitations, though. After Gopher Media, there is no immediate appeal of an anti-SLAPP denial in federal court.⁶ Whether the automatic discovery stay applies in federal court remains contested, since federal courts have their own discovery rules. Other federal circuits have taken varying approaches to state anti-SLAPP statutes, with some declining to apply them at all. A defendant sued in California federal court still has access to the motion. The procedural protections around it are weaker than in state court.

1
California Legislative Information. California Code CCP 425.16
2
Justia Law. Baral v Schnitt
3
Justia Law. Newport Harbor Ventures LLC v Morris Cerullo World Evangelism
4
California Legislative Information. California Code CCP 425.17
5
California Legislative Information. California Code CCP 904.1
6
United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Gopher Media LLC v Melone
7
California Legislative Information. California Code CCP 425.18
8
FindLaw. Newsham v Lockheed Missiles Space Company Inc