Which plaintiffs sued Fox News for COVID-19 or election-related falsehoods from 2020–2025?
Executive summary
Between 2020 and 2025 multiple plaintiffs sued Fox News over alleged election- and COVID‑19‑related falsehoods: the major, widely reported plaintiffs were Dominion Voting Systems (which filed in 2021 and settled in 2023) and Smartmatic (which filed a separate $2.7 billion defamation suit that was active through 2025), while at least one public-interest group — the Washington League for Increased Transparency and Ethics (WASHLITE) — brought litigation over COVID‑19 coverage in April 2020; other individual plaintiffs (including Georgia election workers and a Venezuelan businessman) brought related suits or claims against Fox or its hosts in the broader litigation wave that followed 2020 [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6].
1. Dominion: the first high‑profile voting‑technology plaintiff that won a large settlement
Dominion Voting Systems sued Fox News in early 2021 alleging the network broadcast false claims that Dominion’s machines rigged the 2020 election and the case culminated in a major settlement — Fox agreed to pay approximately $787.5 million to resolve Dominion’s defamation claims in April 2023 — and courts had already found the network’s core allegations false as the case progressed [2] [1] [5].
2. Smartmatic: a second, larger election‑technology lawsuit pressing $2.7 billion
Smartmatic — a London‑based voting technology company that played a limited role in the 2020 race — filed its own $2.7 billion defamation suit against Fox News in 2021, alleging similar harms from on‑air claims that it had stolen votes; as of 2025 the Smartmatic case remained active and headed toward trial after appellate courts allowed it to proceed [3] [7] [8].
3. COVID‑19 litigation: WASHLITE and the question of media responsibility
A separate strand of litigation targeted Fox over its COVID‑19 coverage: the nonprofit Washington League for Increased Transparency and Ethics (WASHLITE) filed a lawsuit on April 2, 2020 accusing Fox of a “pervasive campaign of misinformation and deception” that downplayed the danger of coronavirus and seeking injunctive relief and retractions; Fox moved to dismiss, invoking First Amendment protections and arguing that public‑interest reporting cannot be silenced by lawsuits [4] [9].
4. Other plaintiffs and related claims: election workers and named individuals
Beyond the headline cases, a crop of other plaintiffs pressed claims connected to post‑2020 falsehoods: Georgia election workers who say they were falsely accused of tampering joined separate suits in the same ecosystem of litigation, and individual figures targeted on‑air — such as Venezuelan businessman Majed Khalil — brought or settled claims with Fox, illustrating that the complaints ranged from corporate reputational claims to personal defamation and threats to safety [5] [6].
5. Legal contours and competing narratives: defamation law vs. free‑speech protections
Plaintiffs framed their lawsuits as classic defamation and reputational damage claims, pointing to specific hosts and segments that repeated demonstrably false allegations (papers in Smartmatic’s complaint name hosts like Maria Bartiromo, Lou Dobbs and Jeanine Pirro) while Fox’s defense has emphasized First Amendment safeguards for reporting on public figures and statements by elected officials; legal scholars cautioned that proving deliberate falsehood or reckless disregard for the truth — the standard arising from New York Times v. Sullivan — is a difficult threshold that shapes prospects for COVID‑related suits in particular [10] [11] [12] [9].
6. What reporting shows — and what remains outside this corpus
Reporting assembled to date identifies Dominion and Smartmatic as the principal corporate plaintiffs suing Fox over 2020 election falsehoods and records WASHLITE’s COVID‑era claim, while other plaintiffs (election workers, individual businessmen) filed parallel or related suits and settlements; this account is limited to the sources provided and does not attempt to catalog every local or individual filing beyond those explicitly covered in the reporting [1] [3] [4] [5] [6].