News outlets and journalists are now explicitly protected under a new state law intended to snuff out lawsuits filed to discourage people from participating in government.

Gov. JB Pritzker signed a bill into law this week expanding protections under the Citizen Participation Act, legislation prompted by a former state official’s suit against the Chicago Sun-Times that put the definition of “strategic lawsuits against public participation,” or SLAPPs, before the Illinois Supreme Court.

The state’s anti-SLAPP law was written to empower courts to swiftly throw out any meritless, retaliatory suit that “chills and diminishes citizen participation in government” with the threat of expensive litigation.

But it didn’t “encompass all media reports on matters of public concern,” as Justice David

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