FILE PHOTO: Rep. Lloyd Smucker, R-Pa., speaks during a campaign event in Lititz, Pa., Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018.
Matt Rourke / AP Photo
Pa. Congressman Lloyd Smucker sues local newspaper, claiming defamation
Smucker is seeking $250,000 in damages over an editorial that said Smucker lied about “liberals” pushing for federal funding for health care coverage for immigrants in the country illegally.
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Jordan Wilkie/WITF
Matt Rourke / AP Photo
FILE PHOTO: Rep. Lloyd Smucker, R-Pa., speaks during a campaign event in Lititz, Pa., Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2018.
Republican Congressman Lloyd Smucker filed a lawsuit Monday morning against Lancaster newspaper LNP | LancasterOnline. In the legal complaint, Smucker alleges he was defamed by an LNP editorial with the online headline, “US Rep. Smucker and other Republicans are lying about shutdown and Democrats’ health care aims.”
The opinion article, published by LNP | LancasterOnline’s editorial board on Oct. 8, 2025, focused on Smucker’s claims in a constituent newsletter that “Liberals demanded taxpayer-funded free health care for illegal immigrants” as part of the budget negotiations to avert a federal government shutdown.
Referencing reporting from several national news organizations and from the paper itself, the editorial stated, “Congressman Smucker is lying to his constituents about the health care battle being fought by Democrats. He and his fellow Republicans are playing a cynical game of Twister, stretching and contorting reality to sell a falsehood.”
On Oct. 9, a day after the editorial ran, a lawyer for Smucker sent a letter to LNP leaders and its nonprofit parent company Pennon “demanding an apology, an admission of wrongdoing and a retraction of the editorial by Oct. 15,” according to LNP’s reporting at the time. LNP did not apologize or retract the opinion piece.
The paper’s position has not changed in the months since.
“We will vigorously defend our First Amendment protections in court or otherwise,” said Tom Murse, LNP’s top editor, on Tuesday.
At the time of the editorial’s publication, LNP’s editorial board was run by three opinion staff members and two community members. It operates independently of the news division, which Murse oversees.
“The staff journalists on the Opinion team thoroughly fact-check and vet every letter, every op-ed and every editorial before publication,” Murse said.
The lawsuit claims the opinion article “tended to harm Congressman Smucker’s reputation by lowering him in the estimation of the community and deterring others from associating or dealing with him,” and that he received numerous complaints from constituents.
Smucker asked the court to award him more than $250,000 in damages, as well as other legal costs. Smucker represents all of Lancaster County and the southern half of York County and has served in Congress since 2017.
The lawsuit turns on whether the paper expressed fact or opinion when it stated Smucker lied in his newsletter, according to Melissa Melewsky, media law counsel for the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association. As part of her job helping Pennsylvania news outlets, Melewsky said she advised LNP on the legal issues after it received Smucker’s letter but is not the paper’s lawyer.
“The question here is, ‘Is what the newspaper published opinion or statement of fact?’” said Melewsky. “Representative Smucker believes it’s a statement of fact. The newspaper believes it’s a statement of opinion.”
A screenshot of the LNP | LancasterOnline editorial, included as an exhibit in Smucker’s lawsuit, stating that Rep. Lloyd Smucker lied to his constituents and over which Smucker sued the paper.
Neither Smucker’s office nor his attorney in the case, Walter Zimolong, responded to questions for this story. Zimolong has worked with Lancaster Republicans before. In 2024, Lancaster County Commissioners Josh Parsons and Ray D’Agostino hired Zimolong to defend the county’s decision to reject some mail-in ballots. Zimolong also worked with President Donald Trump’s campaign to challenge 2020 election results in Pennsylvania.
[Follow this link to see Smucker’s full legal complaint, and click here to be directed to the Prothonotary of Lancaster County to find all documents related to the case.]
Strength of the argument
Eric Feder leads a team with the nonprofit Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press to help local newsrooms defend their First Amendment rights. He said Smucker will have to clear a few high hurdles to win his case.
“It seems exceedingly weak to me,” Feder said.
As a public figure, Smucker will need to prove LNP acted with “actual malice,” or that LNP knowingly published false or inaccurate information or had strong doubts and published it anyway, Feder said.
“ That as a general matter is very difficult to establish,” Feder said.
Smucker, in the legal complaint, draws on the opinion article to support his argument. The opinion piece said Smucker lied when he told constituents “liberals” were demanding that federal money be used to provide health care to immigrants in the country illegally.
The editorial noted that immigrants in the country illegally are broadly ineligible for federally funded health care. Hospitals are required to provide emergency care for anyone who needs it – regardless of legal status – and the editorial said that Emergency Medicaid can reimburse hospitals for that care – but the benefit goes to the hospitals, not the immigrants. The editorial also referenced LNP’s previous coverage that found “the complex nature of the Medicaid program and the multiple ways the federal government provides funding to health care providers make it almost certain that some money would indirectly cover the costs of caring for non-citizens who are here illegally.”
Smucker’s lawsuit also claims that since the editorial “used declarative language, purported sourcing, and factual context,” reasonable readers would be led “to understand the Defamatory Statement as a factual allegation, not a subjective viewpoint.”
Feder said the editorial referenced news organizations and fact-checking groups to criticize Smucker’s rhetoric and how he presents an issue to his constituents. Opinion is protected under the First Amendment.
SLAPP back?
Smucker’s lawsuit “inevitably has a chilling effect,” Feder said, adding that his organization views this type of litigation as “horribly destructive to public debate and to news reporting.”
“ The place to have these kinds of debates and hash these things out in the first place is in the public square,” Feder said. “Bringing it into the courts is the exact opposite of encouraging debate.”
In a statement to LNP, Murse invited Smucker to submit a guest column, letter or op-ed.
In filing his lawsuit, Smucker may have opened himself up to paying for legal costs, according to Feder. In 2024, Pennsylvania updated its law protecting public expression.
The expanded law is meant to protect news organizations and members of the public from being sued into silence by well-resourced opponents who can spend money on litigation. These “strategic lawsuits against public participation,” or SLAPPs, are “aimed at silencing free speech through meritless defamation, privacy, or other nuisance claims,” according to the Reporters Committee.
If LNP can prove Smucker is suing over protected public expression, it may be able to force the congressman to pay legal fees, according to Feder.
“There’s no guarantee, and the law is relatively new, and so there’s no precedent to show how courts are actually applying it,” he said, adding that even winning back court costs cannot completely counteract the chilling effect of being sued in the first place.
Financial impact on the paper
Murse said even if Smucker wins his lawsuit, the losses would not force the newspaper to close, even though the most recent public financial disclosures for Pennon show LNP | LancasterOnline has been losing millions of dollars annually for years.
In an email, Murse wrote that LNP | LancasterOnline now operated as an independent nonprofit and had a different business model.
“We have also identified significant cost savings in our operation and have begun to implement them,” Murse said.
On Jan. 8, Pennon officially transferred LNP’s assets to Always Lancaster, a new nonprofit created by former NPR “Morning Edition” host and Lancaster native David Greene. Those assets included the newspaper and its staff.
Pennon spent $2.3 million out of one of its endowments to wind down LNP’s business obligations.
The business changes make it unclear who Smucker is actually suing. Smucker named “LNP Media Group Inc.” in the lawsuit. According to PA Sec. of State business filings, LNP Media Group, Inc.’s name was changed to Local News Press, Inc. and is still owned by Pennon, which includes WITF.
Always Lancaster uses the name LNP Media Group, without the “inc.,”, meaning Smucker’s lawsuit doesn’t match any existing organization.
Pennon’s interim CEO Tom Baldrige said as of noon on Tuesday, his organization had not been served formal notice of a lawsuit.
“However, as a media company we are compelled to reiterate our unwavering support for the First Amendment and the right of free expression of opinion,” he said.
Always Lancaster has also not received formal notice of a lawsuit as of 2 p.m. on Tuesday, according to Murse.
Zimolong, Smucker’s lawyer, did not respond to questions about the actual target of litigation by the time of publication.
Disclaimer: Jaxon White, a WITF reporter, wrote the original article describing Smucker’s claims that liberals sought to fund health care for undocumented immigrants. Russ Walker, an LNP editor, edited the article. At the time of publication, WITF reporters were part of LNP’s newsroom, both under the umbrella of Pennon. The organizations separated as of Jan. 8, 2026. Neither White nor Walker were involved in the writing or editing of this story. Pennon leadership, quoted in this story, was also not involved in editing or decision-making for this story.
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