A Delaware federal judge has dismissed Raymond Epps' defamation lawsuit against again, ending the latest round of litigation over Tucker Carlson's comments about the Arizona man and his alleged role in the Jan. 6 riots. U.S. District Judge Jennifer Hall ruled Friday that Epps' amended complaint still did not clear the bar needed to proceed.
Hall wrote, "I previously granted Fox's motion to dismiss the original Complaint and granted Plaintiff James Ray Epps, Sr., leave to amend," and later added, "I conclude that the [amended complaint] fails to state a plausible claim and should be dismissed." The ruling gives another win after the network first sought dismissal of the case in early January 2025 and then pressed the same argument through a reply later that month.
The latest decision matters because the central fight in the raymond epps lawsuit was whether Fox acted with actual malice, the difficult standard that defamation plaintiffs tied to public-figure claims must usually satisfy. Fox argued in its motion that Epps had offered no new facts to rescue the case, writing, "Plaintiff fails to provide any basis to salvage the Amended Complaint. He does not identify any new factual allegations to alter the holding that he has failed to plead actual malice."
Epps had already lost once in November 2024, when a federal district court granted Fox's motion to dismiss the original complaint, then asked to re-plead after that setback. His amended filing was followed by an answering brief from Epps, Fox's reply in January, a hearing, and one more filing from Epps through the spring and summer of 2025. The judge said many of the new allegations were only conclusory statements and legal assertions that did not have to be accepted as true for purposes of plausibility review.
The opinion also said Epps pointed to skepticism expressed by former Fox employees about things said on Carlson's then-running talk show, but Hall still found the amended case wanting. For now, the court's answer to Epps' long-running claim is no: the pleadings still do not state a defamation case strong enough to go forward.
