U.S. Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick has publicly ignored Elijah Manley, the young activist challenging her in next year’s primary — until now. On Wednesday, she responded to a monthslong series of political attacks from Manley by filing a $1 million defamation lawsuit against him.

Cherfilus-McCormick’s move isn’t unique. Elected officials or candidates filing defamation cases against political opponents — seeking to have disputes heard in courts of law rather than the traditional court of public opinion — is happening more often, lawyers and political analysts agree.

Cherfilus-McCormick’s lawsuit said that Manley’s Instagram videos and published statements about her, including suggesting that the incumbent engaged in misconduct, amount to “a pattern of making false and defamatory statements” about her. The result of those “deliberately spread malicious and false statements” is “reputational harm and public discredit.”

The lawsuit also asserts Manley’s rhetoric about Cherfilus-McCormick is something more — that he has “stalked and cyberbullied” her on social media platforms. Besides monetary damages, the lawsuit seeks a court order prohibiting Manley from attacking the incumbent.

Manley downplayed the lawsuit. His campaign deemed it “frivolous” and said Cherfilus-McCormick was attempting to “deflect attention from the serious corruption investigation against her. This is a classic Trump tactic that will not help her defend her seat, will not help the people of South Florida, and will not help her avoid scrutiny.”

And Manley sought to turn Cherfilus-McCormick’s lawsuit into an advantage for him.

Within hours of the filing in Broward County Circuit Court, the Manley campaign blasted out a fundraising pitch informing supporters of the lawsuit. “While this isn’t what I expected to have to deal with when I woke up, my team and I are proud to have hit a nerve,” Manley said.

Lawsuit

Cherfilus-McCormick, 46, and Manley, 26, are competing for the Democratic nomination in the Broward-Palm Beach county 20th Congressional District. In her complaint, filed in Broward County Circuit Court, Cherfilus-McCormick cited an Instagram video in which she said Manley said “You can’t fight corruption with more corruption — or with representatives who are themselves under investigation for serious ethical violations.”

Cherfilus-McCormick said the statement is “clearly referring” to her and said it implies that she engaged in misconduct.

And in a letter to the editor published in the South Florida Sun Sentinel, Cherfilus-McCormick’s complaint said, Manley defamed her by referring to “the many ethical and legal scandals she brought to Congress” and a report “alleging that she steered taxpayer dollars to a for-profit company supportive of her campaign, in violation of House rules and federal law.”

The congresswoman’s lawsuit says Manley “has engaged in slandering” her “to the point of damaging her reputation and inflicting great emotional harm.”

The Manley campaign statement responding to the lawsuit said, “We are confident this frivolous suit will be dismissed. … Speaking the truth is not illegal in America.”

Political dynamics

Things may change for the Broward-Palm Beach county 20th Congressional District, which is so overwhelmingly Democratic that the winner of the August 2026 primary is all but guaranteed to win the November 2026 general election.

It’s the most heavily Democratic among the 28 Florida congressional districts. The partisan voting index from the Cook Political Report rates the district as D plus 22, which means it performed 22 points more Democratic than the nation during the past two presidential contests.

But Gov. Ron DeSantis has said repeatedly he wants Republicans who control Florida government to change the boundaries of the state’s congressional districts. DeSantis has repeatedly cited one district he thinks should be changed: the 20th, represented by Cherfilus-McCormick.

It’s unknown how a newly configured 20th District might affect the political prospects of Cherfilus-McCormick, Manley or any other potential candidates.

Cherfilus-McCormick, in a brief interview on Aug. 29, said she is “absolutely” running for reelection no matter what.

Candidate strategy

Michael Pizzi, a former Miami Lakes mayor who filed Cherfilus-McCormick’s case against Manley — and other defamation cases on behalf of political figures — acknowledged that for years politicians typically would ignore outrageous allegations in order to avoid giving them “more oxygen.”

But Pizzi said people expect public officials to fight back. “If she doesn’t sue, people may think it’s true,” Pizzi said. “People will be asking why she’s not suing, why she’s just sitting back and not doing anything about it.”

Manley’s campaign hasn’t yet filed a response in court. Its media statement said that, “The right to criticize our public officials is protected under the First Amendment and is a cornerstone of our democracy. This is what separates the United States from authoritarian regimes.”

The filing of lawsuits against opponents may be an effective political strategy — or it may not be.

Filing a lawsuit can mean that the very statements that someone is suing about get more attention, and some people who never heard about the controversy now learn about it. “It potentially does risk calling more attention to it,” said Kevin Wagner, a political science professor at Florida Atlantic University.

That phenomenon even has a name, the Streisand effect, named after the singer Barbra Streisand. She sued a photographer who had taken pictures all along the California coast to document coastal erosion. As a result of her suit seeking to have the picture of her Malibu home removed from the internet, the picture drew thousands more views than it had before she called attention to it.

Traditionally, many candidates have decided the best move is to ignore what their challengers are saying about them, Wagner said, and “simply move past it because they simply don’t want to give it more air or more coverage.”

Larry Davis, a Hollywood lawyer whose specialties include election law, said the potential to call more attention to the claims is a downside of a defamation lawsuit. If not for the lawsuit, it’s possible “people wouldn’t have known anything about it.”

Davis and Wagner said they were commenting generally, not on the case involving Cherfilus-McCormick and Manley.

Wagner said “defamation is typically not easy when you’re dealing with public figures, because they typically have to prove actual malice.”

And, he said, the length of many court cases often doesn’t match up with an election campaign. “Typically the remedy in a defamation case is a ruling and sometimes damages. That doesn’t fix the issue in a campaign; it might not happen until well after a campaign is over.”

A victory might not be the biggest reason for filing a lawsuit, Wagner said. Taking action may be used “to illustrate a candidate is standing up for himself or herself,” he said, adding that “one of the takeaways of modern politics is that combativeness gets focused attention and draws support.”

Pizzi said the reason there are more of these kinds of cases is that courts are showing more willingness to get involved in “cracking down on out-of-control politicians who cross the line from protected speech, or hide behind the First Amendment to make false accusations of corruption and criminal conduct.”

“The days when a public official could be a punching bag for being accused of fraud, crimes, corruption and all sorts of illegal conduct, I think those days are over,” Pizzi said. “The message should go out that public figures are no longer going to be pin cushions.”

Reviewing conduct

Cherfilus-McCormick won a special Democratic primary election in 2021 to fill the vacancy left by the death of the late U.S. Rep. Alcee Hastings.

She won the rest of Hastings’ term early in 2022, won a full term that November, and was reelected without opposition in 2024.

Cherfilus-McCormick spent heavily from her own funds in her initial victories, drawing scrutiny about her finances.

Earlier this year, a lawsuit involving Cherfilus-McCormick’s former company, Trinity Health Care Services, was settled this year after the Florida Division of Emergency Management sued Trinity to recover what it said was $5.8 million in overpayments it mistakenly made.

Before she was elected to Congress, Cherfilus-McCormick was the CEO of the family-owned company, but was not named as a defendant in the lawsuit. Trinity did not admit any wrongdoing in the settlement, and it agreed to repay $5.62 million.

The Office of Congressional Conduct, an official agency, said in a May 2024 report that there was probable cause to believe Cherfilus-McCormick “accepted campaign contributions linked to an official action.”

The report containing that statement was released a year later, in May 2025, by the House Ethics Committee, which has an investigative subcommittee looking into Cherfilus-McCormick’s conduct.

Cherfilus-McCormick said at the time that she “fully respect(s) the process and remain(s) committed to cooperating with the Committee as it works to bring this inquiry to a close.”

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