A state law designed to prevent lawsuits that curtail public participation in government now explicitly protects the news media.

Gov. JB Pritzker signed a measure into law on Thursday that was spurred by a former government official’s lawsuit against the Chicago Sun-Times. Senate Bill 1181 explicitly protects non-investigative news reporting against “strategic lawsuits against public participation,” otherwise known as SLAPP lawsuits.

The Illinois Supreme Court allowed a lawsuit by a former Property Tax Appeals Board director to continue against the Sun-Times last year despite the paper’s claims that it was a SLAPP suit under the 2007 Citizen Participation Act .

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