Criminal Defamation Laws in the United States: Penalties and Defenses

Criminal defamation laws in the United States still exist in roughly two dozen states, where knowingly spreading false statements that damage someone’s reputation can be charged as a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail and fines reaching $3,000. There is no federal criminal defamation statute. Whether you face any criminal exposure for what you say or post depends almost entirely on the state you’re in and whether local prosecutors are willing to use a law that is often decades old.

Which States Still Have Criminal Defamation Laws

A 2016 survey by the Committee to Protect Journalists counted 24 states and the U.S. Virgin Islands with criminal defamation provisions on the books. The number has shrunk since. Louisiana repealed its statute in 2021, and Utah formally repealed its law in 2024 after the state supreme court had already declared it unconstitutionally overbroad.¹ Several other states have statutes that courts have struck down but legislatures have never removed from the code.

Among the states where the laws remain enforceable, the specifics vary widely:

New Hampshire classifies criminal defamation as a Class B misdemeanor and requires proof that the speaker knowingly communicated false information tending to expose someone to public hatred, contempt, or ridicule.²
Minnesota punishes knowing communication of false and defamatory matter with up to 364 days in jail, a fine of up to $3,000, or both.³
Wisconsin makes defamation a Class A misdemeanor but requires two witnesses to corroborate any prosecution based on an oral statement. Truth spoken with good motives and for justifiable ends is a complete defense.⁴
New Mexico spells out five categories of harmful statements, including false claims that someone committed a crime or has a “moral vice” that makes them unfit for respectable society. Statements made in legislative or judicial proceedings are exempt.⁵
Virginia criminalizes false statements that impugn someone’s chastity or amount to “grossly insulting language” tending toward a breach of the peace. Conviction is a Class 3 misdemeanor.⁶
North Carolina has one of the narrowest statutes. It applies only to someone who delivers a false and libelous statement to a newspaper or periodical and secures its publication. The offense is a Class 2 misdemeanor.⁷

Other states with criminal defamation provisions include Idaho,⁸ Michigan,⁹ Oklahoma, North Dakota, Montana, Florida, Kansas, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.¹⁰ The count shifts periodically as legislatures act or courts intervene.

What Prosecutors Have to Prove

Statutes differ in wording, but the core elements of a criminal defamation case are largely the same across states.

Publication. The defendant must have communicated the statement to at least one person other than the target. The medium does not matter: written, spoken, posted online, or transmitted any other way. Without a third-party recipient, there is no case. Wisconsin adds an evidentiary rule — a prosecution based on an oral statement requires at least two witnesses who heard and understood the words as defamatory.⁴

Falsity. The government must prove the statement is factually false, at least when the speech concerns public affairs. That requirement comes from Garrison v. Louisiana, 379 U.S. 64 (1964), in which the Supreme Court held that “truth may not be the subject of either civil or criminal sanctions where discussion of public affairs is concerned.”¹¹ Older laws that punished reputation-damaging speech regardless of accuracy are no longer good law.

Mental state. Most modern statutes require proof that the speaker knew the statement was false, not merely that they were careless. Minnesota demands “knowledge of its false and defamatory character,”³ and New Hampshire requires that the speaker “knows” the information is false.² When the target is a public official or public figure, Garrison layers on a constitutional requirement that the speaker acted with “actual malice” — knowledge of falsity or reckless disregard for the truth. If the speaker genuinely believed the statement was true, a conviction cannot stand.

Reputational harm. The statement must tend to injure the target in a defined way, typically by exposing them to public hatred, contempt, or ridicule, or by harming them professionally. A few statutes, including Idaho’s and the U.S. Virgin Islands’, extend protection to the memory of deceased persons.⁸

Penalties for a Conviction

Criminal defamation is a misdemeanor in every state that maintains an enforceable statute. Maximum jail sentences generally run from six months to one year, depending on the misdemeanor class. Fines range from a few hundred dollars up to Minnesota’s $3,000 ceiling.³ Court costs and prosecution fees are typically added on top of the statutory fine. Probation is a common alternative or supplement to jail time, often with conditions restricting contact with the victim.

The collateral consequences often outlast the sentence. A misdemeanor record can show up in background checks and affect employment, housing, and immigration status. Professionals holding state-issued licenses — lawyers, doctors, nurses, teachers, accountants — can face disciplinary review after any criminal conviction. Licensing boards routinely treat convictions as evidence of professional misconduct, and morality clauses in licensing regulations can lead to suspension or revocation regardless of whether the underlying offense was a felony or misdemeanor.

Defenses That Can Defeat a Charge

Truth

Truth is the strongest defense. Under Garrison, truthful speech about public affairs is constitutionally protected and cannot be punished criminally.¹¹ Many state statutes also codify truth as an affirmative defense, sometimes with conditions. Wisconsin requires that the truth be “communicated with good motives and for justifiable ends,” which could theoretically disqualify a defendant who spread accurate but damaging information purely out of spite.⁴ That qualification is likely unconstitutional in any case touching public affairs.

Privilege

Statements made during court proceedings by judges, attorneys, parties, and witnesses are absolutely immune from defamation claims, criminal or civil. The same goes for legislators acting in official legislative business. New Mexico’s statute codifies this directly, exempting any “statement made in the course of a legislative or judicial proceeding, whether true or false.”⁵

A narrower qualified privilege covers settings where the speaker has a legitimate reason to share unflattering information: employers giving honest job references, citizens reporting suspected crimes, journalists summarizing official government proceedings under the fair report privilege. The protection holds as long as the speaker acts without knowing the statement is false and stays within the privileged purpose.

Lack of Actual Malice

When the target is a public official or public figure, the prosecution must prove the speaker knew the statement was false or acted with reckless disregard for the truth. Honest belief in the statement’s truth defeats the case. This is a high bar for prosecutors, and it is a significant reason criminal defamation prosecutions against critics of government officials rarely succeed.

Vagueness

Statutes written in sweeping or ill-defined terms can be challenged on constitutional grounds. In Ashton v. Kentucky, 384 U.S. 195 (1966), the Supreme Court struck down a common-law criminal libel conviction because the offense — defined at trial as publishing material “calculated to create disturbances of the peace” — was unconstitutionally vague. The Court held that laws touching First Amendment rights must be “narrowly drawn to prevent the supposed evil.”¹² Older or loosely drafted state statutes remain vulnerable to the same argument.

Criminal Defamation and Online Speech

Social media has pulled criminal defamation into territory the original statutes never contemplated. A Facebook post or a tweet satisfies the publication element the same way a printed broadside did centuries ago. Most criminal defamation laws are written broadly enough to cover any form of communication to third parties.

Sharing or reposting someone else’s statement can also expose the sharer. Under the traditional republication doctrine, anyone who repeats a defamatory statement is as liable as the person who said it first. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act provides that no “user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider,” and in civil cases it has broadly protected users who share third-party content.¹³ Whether Section 230 blocks state criminal defamation charges for sharing another person’s content is unresolved. The statute’s criminal law carve-out mentions only federal criminal statutes, and no appellate court has squarely decided the question.

Section 230 offers no protection to someone who authors original defamatory content. A knowingly false post about a neighbor carries the same criminal exposure online as a printed and distributed leaflet would.

No Federal Criminal Defamation Statute

There is no federal criminal defamation law. Common-law federal criminal libel was effectively ended by Ashton, and Congress has never enacted a replacement.¹² Any criminal exposure for defamation comes from state law, which means the first question in any case is which state’s statute applies and whether that statute has survived constitutional challenge. Civil defamation lawsuits — the far more common response to reputational harm — are a separate track and remain available in every state regardless of whether a criminal statute exists.

1
Louisiana State Legislature. Louisiana Revised Statutes 14-47
2
New Hampshire General Court. New Hampshire Code 644-11 – Criminal Defamation
3
Minnesota Office of the Revisor of Statutes. Minnesota Code 609.765 – Criminal Defamation
4
Wisconsin State Legislature. Wisconsin Statutes 942.01 – Defamation
5
Justia. New Mexico Statutes 30-11-1 – Libel
6
Virginia Code Commission. Virginia Code 18.2-417 – Slander and Libel
7
North Carolina General Assembly. North Carolina General Statutes 14-47
8
Idaho State Legislature. Idaho Code 18-4801 – Libel Defined
9
Michigan Legislature. Michigan Compiled Laws 750.370 – Falsely and Maliciously Accusing Another
10
Justia. US Virgin Islands Code Title 14, 1171 – Libel Defined
11
Library of Congress. Garrison v. Louisiana, 379 U.S. 64 (1964)
12
Justia. Ashton v. Kentucky, 384 U.S. 195 (1966)
13
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 47 U.S. Code 230 – Protection for Private Blocking and Screening of Offensive Material