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[T]he court now arrives at the heart of this issue: does falsely reporting that a person is transgender have a natural tendency to injury [sic] one’s reputation?” the judge’s tentative ruling read. “This court finds that because courts have long held that a misidentification of certain immutable characteristics do not naturally tend to injure one’s reputation, even if there is sizeable portion of the population who hold prejudices against those characteristics, misidentification of a person as transgender is not actionable defamation absent special damages.”
http://www.sfgate.com/entertainment...-Simmons-Ordered-to-Pay-National-12219069.php
Ok, here's what I find interesting about this, well, there's a couple of things. First off is that Richard Simmons hardly seems one to be antagonistic to the LGBT community while the Enquirer doesn't seem especially sensitive to it but it's like Simmons is the intolerant bad guy. It seems the reasoning here is that being intentionally labeled as transgender is not something Simmons should really object to and he's so wrong to sue over this, he has to pay attorney fees. Don't get me wrong, it's extremely difficult for public figures to prevail on such lawsuits and this may well be the absolute right result, but I wonder if it's for the right reason.
Also, this comes at a time when there's more and more of a push to punish people for "misgendering" trans people. It makes me wonder if the results would have been the same had the National Enquirer repeatedly referred to a trans person as their birth gender.