Can A Tarot Card Reading Be Defamatory? – by Ken White
Professor Rebecca Scofield of the University of Idaho, the chair of the University s history department, has sued Ashely Guillard, a Tik-Tok personality, for defamation in federal court in Idaho. Guillard, a weirdo-American, promotes herself on Amazon and TikTok as an Internet sleuth that solves high-profile unsolved murders by consulting tarot cards, according to Scofield s lawsuit. In the wake of a gruesome murder of four students at the University, Guillard released a series of TikTok videos asserting that Professor Scofield plotted and ordered the murders and was in a prohibited personal relationship with one of the students. There seems to be no dispute except from Guillard that this is entirely fabricated and has no basis in reality. Guillard seems to have picked Scofield for this tirade out of mental illness or mercurial social media caprice.
Is it defamatory to offer an opinion based on magic? Is it defamatory to say that you saw in a dream that someone committed a crime? Is it defamatory to say that tarot cards told you that someone committed a crime? What about the entrails of a sheep? What about if you say God told you after you prayed over it? Is your interpretation of tarot cards a potentially false fact ?
Idaho, in the news, and a nice legal question!