Judge dismisses billion-dollar lawsuit claiming Notre Dame libeled China by describing genocide there

“A Chinese man cannot file a racial discrimination lawsuit against the University of Notre Dame for a legal brief that commented on genocide in the country,” reports The College Fix.

Federal judge Gretchen Lund dismissed the lawsuit filed by Bing Chen, which denounced an amicus brief filed by the Catholic university’s religious liberty clinic. Chen sought over $1 billion in damages – $1 for every Chinese person in China, plus $1 for every American.

Chen’s 50-page complaint denies that China’s communist government engaged in genocide against Uyghurs in China. In China’s northwest, as many as three million members of ethnic minority groups have been imprisoned in grim concentration camps. Over one million of the imprisoned people are Uyghurs, the largest minority group in China’s Xinjiang region. Torture is widespread in the concentration camps, and thousands have died in them. Uyghur cemeteries have been destroyed in a campaign some have called cultural genocide.

Yet, Chen wrote in his complaint:

If these serious human rights violations against the Uyghurs are true, how could there be no public protests or resistance from Uyghurs in China? How is it possible that the Chinese public wouldn’t openly condemn such actions? The so-called genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang are also an insult to the Uyghurs in Xinjiang.

The amicus brief filed by Notre Dame caused harm to Chinese people in America, Chen alleged.

“Including the defendant, many made false statements that were believed by some Chinese children in the USA, causing them serious emotional distress and undermining their connection to their Chinese heritage,” he claimed in his complaint. “The plaintiffs encountered this problem.”

Chen argues that saying something critical of a country can lead to ethnic violence against people descended from that country. (This dangerous notion that criticizing China’s government fuels racism was relied on by left-wing campus officials to in 2021 to investigate a conservative professor who criticized China’s repressive and secretive regime).

“The so-called Xinjiang concentration camps, rape, forced labor, crimes against humanity, and genocide are all bull[crud] and hateful words,” Chen wrote. “Hateful rhetoric can also stir dangerous emotions. The hate speech increases political polarization and that this, in turn, makes domestic terrorism more likely in U.S.A, Especially to Chinese Americans.”

Judge Lund found these arguments lacked weight. and dismissed the lawsuit for lack of standing to sue under Article III of the Constitution.

“Plaintiffs’ Complaint contains very few allegations involving Plaintiffs themselves; largely, the Complaint references alleged harms to ‘mainland China’ and Chinese people generally,” she ruled. “There are only six paragraphs in which Plaintiffs identify harm they have suffered.” And those purported “harms” were very vague, such as claiming the genocide allegations “demonize China and the Chinese people.”

Chen did not show how the allegations of genocide personally injured him, Judge Lund ruled. “The Court fails to see how Plaintiffs’ reputations were in-fact harmed, nor have Plaintiffs provided any additional allegations or evidence in support of this assertion.”