Vaidik, C.J.
Case Summary
A minor and her family filed a medical-malpractice complaint against a doctor after the doctor reported to the Department of Child Services (DCS) that the minor was a victim of medical child abuse. The doctor filed a motion to dismiss the complaint pursuant to Indiana’s anti-SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) statute, which protects a person’s right of petition or free speech under the federal and state constitutions “in connection with a public issue or an issue of public interest.” The doctor claimed that her report to DCS was protected by the anti-SLAPP statute. The trial court agreed, finding that the doctor spoke about a public issue or an issue of public interest when she made the report to DCS.
We find that the anti-SLAPP statute does not apply to reports of child abuse or neglect made to DCS. While child-abuse detection and prevention, on a macro level, is of great interest to the general public, individual reporting is not. Furthermore, the doctor’s report was not made “in furtherance of” her constitutional rights, as required by the anti-SLAPP statute, but rather because of her statutory duty to report child abuse or neglect. We therefore reverse and remand.
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…While child-abuse detection and prevention, on a macro level, is of great interest to the general public, the public interest in the more narrow issues addressed by Dr. Demetris’s report to DCS that she believed A.V. was the victim of medical child abuse is not significant. This is because this was a private matter. The call to the DCS hotline was confidential by statute. Any reports generated by DCS in response to the call were confidential by statute, and any juvenile-court proceedings were confidential by statute as well. In other words, there generally cannot be widespread, public interest in individual child-abuse cases because our confidentiality statutes and rules are designed to limit such interest. Accordingly, we conclude that Dr. Demetris’s report to DCS was not made in connection with a public issue or an issue of public interest.
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We therefore reverse the trial court’s grant of summary judgment on the anti-SLAPP issue in favor of Dr. Demetris and remand this case to the trial court for consideration of the issues that were stayed—immunity and lack of a physician-patient relationship between Dr. Demetris and M.V. Although we have concluded that the anti-SLAPP statute does not apply to Dr. Demetris’s report to DCS, we express no opinion on the stayed issues.
Reversed and remanded.
Bailey, J., and Robb, J., concur.