Young Chiefs fan's defamation lawsuit against Deadspin to move forward: 'Crossed the

[4th and Long]

Young Chiefs fan's defamation lawsuit against Deadspin to move forward: 'Crossed the fine line'

A Delaware judge ruled Monday that the Armenta family’s lawsuit against Deadspin for accusing their son of wearing "blackface" at a Chiefs game last year can proceed.

In 2023, Deadspin writer Carron Phillips wrote an article using an image of nine-year-old Holden Armenta sporting black and red Kansas City Chiefs face paint at a game, showing only the black half of his face. Phillips accused Holden of finding a way to "hate Black people and the Native Americans at the same time" and accused his parents of teaching him "hatred."

Holden’s parents Raul Jr. and Shannon later filed a lawsuit in February accusing the sports blog of maliciously attacking Holden by selectively posting only one half of his face and accusing them of racism.


Holden Armenta, 9, attends the Chiefs-Raiders game on Nov. 26 in Las Vegas.

On Monday, Superior Court Judge Sean Lugg denied Deadspin’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit, agreeing that the blog posted "provable false assertions" as facts rather than opinion.

"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 [Holden] 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.


Deadspin posted an image showing only one half of Holden's face at a Chiefs game.

Lugg also refused to dismiss the case based on the assertion that the case should have been filed in the Armenta family’s home state of California rather than Delaware, where Deadspin’s parent company G/O Media resides. G/O Media later sold Deadspin to Lineup Publishing one month after the lawsuit was filed.

A representative from G/O Media declined to comment to Fox News Digital.

Deadspin did not retract the original article. However, an editor’s note was added to address the controversy.

"We regret any suggestion that we were attacking the fan or his family. To that end, our story was updated on Dec. 7 to remove any photos, tweets, links, or otherwise identifying information about the fan. We have also revised the headline to better reflect the substance of the story," the note read.

The headline was also changed from "The NFL needs to speak out against the Kansas City Chiefs fan in Black face, Native headdress" to "The NFL Must Ban Native Headdress And Culturally Insensitive Face Paint in the Stands."



Judge Lugg agreed the original article asserted its accusations of racism as "provable false assertions of fact."


Phillips initially doubled down on his accusations in a since-deleted X post.

"For the idiots in my mentions who are treating this as some harmless act because the other side of his face was painted red, I could make the argument that it makes it even worse. Y'all are the ones who hate [M]exican but wear sombreros on cinco [de Mayo]," Phillips said.

[Bump]

nice, **** those pieces of shit that tried to smear a child

[UteChief]

Deadspin seems to write a lot of racially motivated articles and opinions. I stopped reading their crap.

[dlphg9]

Dude, Deadspin should pay out of their asses and hopefully get shut down for allowing this crap to be published. The stupid bitch, Carron Phillips, should be blacklisted and never have another article published again. First she writes the stupid as shit article and then doubles down by saying the red makes it worse because of Mexicans and sombreros or some shit.

What a dumb bitch.

[wazu]

Never even hear of Deadspin anymore. This story is the only thing I’ve seen from/about them in the past 10 years. They probably love it.

[Strongside]

Dead spin and everyone who works there is shit. It cannot die soon enough.

[suzzer99]

Deadspin died 4 years ago when they let Drew Magary and every other good writer go. It's just a clickbait mill run by vulture capitalists now.

[Nickhead]

good on him and his family...
totally unwarranted accusations.

[HemiEd]

It is good to see this kind of stuff/writers getting their just reward. I will stop there in an effort to keep this out of D.C.

[oldandslow]

I truly am not hyper race sensitive, but accusing the kid of appropriating black culture while wearing a plains Indian war bonnet is pretty ironic.

Just sayin'

[Cheater5]

I’m guessing this will be moved to DC before noon today, as we’ll likely have someone who is 1/8th Passamaquoddy Indian on their father’s side who will tell is how raciss we all are.