A Philippine news site co-founded by Nobel laureate Maria Ressa can continue operating after a court overturned a shutdown order, according to the ruling released Friday, the latest legal victory for the media outfit.
Ressa and Rappler have been fighting multiple court cases filed during former president Rodrigo Duterte’s administration.
Ressa, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021, was a vocal critic of Duterte and the deadly drug war he launched in 2016.
That triggered what media advocates say was a grinding series of criminal charges, probes and online attacks against her and Rappler.
“It’s a vindication after a tortuous eight years of harassment,” Rappler said in a statement.
“It’s a fact that the Duterte government used the SEC order to unleash its power to further harass us, our employees, our stakeholders and our communities.”
The Court of Appeals decision, issued on July 23 but only released to the media on Friday, reversed a previous ruling by the Philippine Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that had ordered the shutdown of Rappler.
The SEC order had been a “grave abuse of discretion” and contravened “established procedures, jurisprudential and legal instructions, and clear intent of the Constitution”, the court said.
The SEC shutdown order was affirmed on June 28, 2022, days before Duterte left office. It was first issued in 2018.
It revoked Rappler’s “certificate of incorporation” for violating constitutional and statutory restrictions on foreign ownership in mass media.
Rappler has continued operating as it appealed the SEC order.
Under the constitution, investment in media is reserved for Filipinos or Filipino-controlled entities.
The case sprang from the 2015 investment from the US-based Omidyar Network, established by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar.
Omidyar later transferred its investment in Rappler to the site’s local managers to stave off efforts by Duterte to shut it down.
After the overturning of the SEC decision, Human Rights Watch researcher Carlos Conde said that “justice and good sense have prevailed”.
“The Court of Appeals decision to void the SEC’s shutdown order against Rappler is long overdue,” Conde said.
“That order should never have been handed down by the Duterte administration, whose vindictiveness knew no bounds.”
The Department of Justice dropped a charge last year alleging Ressa illegally put Rappler under foreign control.
Ressa has also been acquitted on five government charges of tax evasion.
Ressa and a former colleague are still appealing a cyber libel conviction that carries a nearly seven-year jail sentence.
She also faces the prospect of a maximum 15-year jail sentence if convicted in a separate case stemming from the Omidyar investment.
