School board president sued by Huntington Beach mayor pro tem prevails in court
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An Orange County Superior Court judge has dismissed a defamation lawsuit filed by Huntington Beach Mayor Pro Tem Butch Twining against Ocean View School District Board of Trustees President Gina Clayton-Tarvin.
Judge Craig Griffin granted Clayton-Tarvin’s anti-SLAPP motion in a tentative ruling Saturday, then confirmed that ruling during a hearing Monday afternoon in Fullerton.
Clayton-Tarvin filed the motion, designed to protect those exercising their 1st Amendment rights of free speech, after Twining sued her in December. He was seeking a jury trial and $25 million in damages.
Twining said Monday that he was not planning to appeal the ruling, essentially ending the lawsuit. As part of the anti-SLAPP ruling, he would also be required to pay Clayton-Tarvin’s attorney’s fees.
“Obviously, I think the court got this right,” Clayton-Tarvin said Monday. “It was a slam dunk, it was a home run hit out of the park, thanks to the 1st Amendment. The bottom line is that our nation’s founders knew what they were doing. They were trying to protect citizens and their right to redress, and that’s exactly what I was attempting to do. What Americans have been doing for 250 years is fighting against repressive officials who think that they can attack and silence others. That’s not OK. That’s not what this country is founded on.”
The dispute came from Twining’s attendance of a vigil at Huntington Beach Pier Plaza in September, the night of the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. The vigil, organized by the Orange County Young Republicans, soon shifted tones.
A 14-second video that went viral, posted by Mark Bixby of Surf City Sentinel the day after the event, shows men chanting “White man fight back,” with Twining holding an American flag and a candle.
Twining, who was a council member at the time before being appointed mayor pro tem in December, has repeatedly said he became uncomfortable and left. He denounced white supremacists in a statement at the Huntington Beach City Council meeting six days later.
Twining told the Daily Pilot in December and repeated on Monday that the chants sounded muddled at first, but he left as soon as he figured out what was being chanted.
Clayton-Tarvin, voted by her colleagues to her sixth term as OVSD board president in December, made social media posts criticizing Twining following the vigil. In an Instagram post made on Sept. 13 she said that Twining participated in “a white supremacy rally … an all-out hate rally staring [sic] the extremist MAGA city council member, Twining, who can’t seem to keep himself out of trouble.”
In a post on X made the same day, Clayton-Tarvin said that Twining “was there gleefully chanting amongst alt right white supremacists.”
Twining said Monday that he respected the judge’s ruling, adding that his motivation in suing Clayton-Tarvin was to ensure that what he called “false and grossly misleading” representations about his presence at the vigil would not stand.
“As an American and as an elected official, I support the rights we all have to engage in the public discourse,” he said as part of a statement. “At the same time, I maintain my right to be clear about what I believe. I categorically denounce any ideology that includes any element of white supremacy or racial inequality, and my decades-long record as a private professional and public official speaks for itself.”
Ben Kassis, an attorney representing Twining, argued to Griffin on Monday that there was evidence that Twining did not participate in a white supremacist rally.
“The gist of [Clayton-Tarvin’s] message was not that [Twining] was at an event and white supremacists were there,” Kassis said. “The gist of her message was that he aligned himself with the white supremacists and chanted things he did not chant.”
But Griffin had written in his tentative ruling that Clayton-Tarvin’s statements were “substantially true,” adding that she did not state that Twining was a white supremacist or that he chanted white supremacist slogans.
“She never came out and said he was chanting that,” Griffin said Monday. “It may sound like I’m painting a fine line, but I really think I’m not.”
Clayton-Tarvin was represented by four lawyers at Monday’s proceedings, including Lee Fink.
“Defamation is never about opinion, it’s only the actual facts,” Fink said following the hearing. “The facts were, Butch Twining was there ... I don’t know exactly what he chanted, but Gina didn’t claim to know exactly what he chanted.”
