By Gary Chester, Senior Writer
The once-proud Stanford University football program last produced a winning season in 2018 when David Shaw was the head coach. After the Cardinal suffered four straight losing seasons, Stanford replaced Shaw in 2023 with former New York Jets and Cal Golden Bears quarterback Troy Taylor. The choice looked good on paper because Taylor had coached Sacramento State to an undefeated record in 2022.
In practice, the hire proved disastrous for Stanford. The team finished 3-9 in two consecutive seasons amidst allegations of Taylor’s wrongful workplace conduct towards females in the athletic department. The University retained two outside law firms to investigate the allegations in 2023 and 2024. On March 19, 2025, ESPN reported the investigations with this headline: “Reports find Stanford’s Taylor bullied, belittled female staffers.”
ESPN reporters Xuan Thai and Dan Wetzel obtained Taylor’s confidential personnel files and wrote several stories. On March 25, 2025, Stanford fired Taylor, who blamed ESPN’s “misleading and sensationalized” reporting for his termination. The coach did not sue Stanford for wrongful termination or for the unauthorized leak of the investigation reports, but he did file a defamation complaint in federal court against ESPN and Thai on July 30, 2025, titled Taylor v. ESPN, Inc., et al, Case no. 5:2025-cv-6384 (N.D. Cal. March 17, 2026). The defendants promptly filed a motion to dismiss the complaint.
What Did the Two Investigations Reveal?
The first investigation arose from a complaint that Taylor had asked to replace a football administrator based on her gender. Outside attorney/consultant Kate Weaver Patterson found insufficient evidence in her 2023 investigation, but Stanford issued Taylor a written warning to improve his communication style. In February 2024, Stanford agreed to extend Taylor’s contract with an increase in his salary and his buy-out.
A few weeks later, Stanford received a complaint from a female compliance office after she met with the coach and discussed “the physical speed at which Stanford players could participate in a ‘walk-through.’” Taylor allegedly expressed frustration that the compliance officer was interpreting NCAA rules too strictly. The University retained sports attorney and former prosecutor Timothy O’Brien to investigate.
O’Brien concluded that Taylor’s treatment of the compliance officer was “inappropriate, discriminatory on the basis of her sex,” and that it “had a significant negative impact on her.” O’Brien also found that Taylor retaliated against the compliance officer by “seeking her removal from her assigned duties” after she raised concerns about NCAA rules violations.
Taylor said he never received a copy of O’Brien’s 2024 investigation report, but he contested the findings that were summarized for him. He agreed to forfeit his pay raise for 12 months and issued a private apology. The matter would have ended quietly had someone not leaked the investigation reports to ESPN.
ESPN reported on March 19, 2025 that the investigations were initiated because multiple employees complained that Taylor acted in a hostile and aggressive manner towards them. The story claimed that both reports found that the coach had bullied female staffers. Taylor alleged that the story was false because the first investigation was based on a single complaint and found insufficient evidence.
On March 22, 2025, ESPN published a follow-up article by Wetzel which Taylor contended was inaccurate. Stanford terminated Taylor three days later. Taylor sent a letter of complaint to ESPN but never received a response. ESPN published a third story on March 25, 2025 that repeated its investigatory findings while taking some credit for Taylor’s firing.
On April 6, 2025, Taylor issued a public statement to present his side of the story. He claimed that ESPN did not accurately report his statement, instead publishing a false statement that the first investigation found merit in three complaints against him for acting inappropriately towards female employees. ESPN issued a statement standing by its reporting. Taylor filed his defamation lawsuit less than four months later.
Was ESPN’s Reporting Defamatory?
ESPN and Thai filed a motion to dismiss the complaint in lieu of filing an answer, which is a common practice in defamation cases. U.S. Magistrate Judge Virginia K. DeMarchi stated in her opinion that California defamation law “involves the intentional publication of a fact which is false, unprivileged, and has a natural tendency to injure which causes special damage.”
Defamation claims by sports figures are uncommon, perhaps because they are often public figures who must prove the damaging statements were published with malice. Judge DeMarchi analyzed whether Taylor was a public or private figure. Under California law, public figures must prove by clear and convincing evidence that the defendant published the disparaging statements with malice—it knew the statements were false or published them with reckless disregard of whether they were true or false. (New York Times v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964)).
ESPN argued that Taylor was a public figure for the purpose of the controversy. Taylor countered that he was not a public figure because the controversy over whether Stanford should fire him was created entirely by ESPN’s reporting. The court applied the Ninth Circuit’s three-factor test of whether: (1) “a public controversy existed when the [challenged] statements were made”; (2) “whether the alleged defamation is related to [Mr. Taylor]’s participation in the controversy”; and (3) “whether [Mr. Taylor] voluntarily injected [him]self into the controversy for the purpose of influencing the controversy’s ultimate resolution.”
ESPN argued that Taylor became a public figure for a limited purpose when he took the head coaching position at Stanford, and that his record and his firing were matters of public interest. The court noted, however, that the test for determining whether a person is a limited purpose public figure is based on the existence of a “public controversy at the time the challenged statements were made.” The defendants did not define any controversy, and the court concluded that there was no existing controversy over Taylor’s workplace conduct when ESPN published its reports. The actual malice standard did not apply, so Taylor had cleared a major hurdle.
The court next considered nine statements contained in three ESPN articles. They were somewhat repetitive and based on the specific wording of ESPN’s reporting. For example, Taylor argued that the March 19, 2025 headline (“Reports find Stanford’s Taylor bullied, belittled female staffers”) was false because it suggested that both workplace investigations found that he had acted improperly towards women. The 2023 investigation found that he engaged in belittling behavior and made “inappropriate comments,” but it did not include a discriminatory component based on gender and/or acts of bullying. The 2024 investigation found that Taylor made “belittling comments” and “expressed inappropriate anger and frustration” with staff. Patterson found credible descriptions of Mr. Taylor’s conduct towards a female staff member as “super aggressive,” and was “shut[ting] her down and dismiss[ing] her.”
The court concluded that ESPN’s reporting was substantially true and not defamatory as a matter of law. Judge DeMarchi wrote that Taylor objected to ESPN’s suggestion that the 2023 and 2024 be taken together, he cited “no authority for the proposition that defendants are required to report about each investigation separately, or that the article’s headline must disaggregate the findings from each investigation…” Since the headline referred to both reports, it was substantially accurate.
Another statement in issue from the March 19, 2025 article read as follows: “The investigations began after multiple employees filed complaints against Taylor for what they called hostile and aggressive behavior, as well as personal attacks, the reports said.” Taylor argued that the statement was false and defamatory because the 2023 investigation began after one individual made a single complaint that Taylor wanted to replace the football administrator because of her gender, an allegation that was found lacking in evidence.
The court noted that the 2023 report stated that Stanford retained Patterson to investigate after more than one person raised concerns about Taylor, and that her review was not limited to the initial complaint regarding the football administrator. Also, the body of the ESPN article made it clear that the 2023 investigation began with one complaint, so the challenged statement was substantially true and non-actionable.
The Court Denies Taylor Another Bite at the Apple
Federal Rule 15(a) has a liberal policy favoring leave to amend a deficient complaint. Leave is often granted in defamation cases when the complaint contains insufficient allegations of malice, which did not apply here. In this case, the court denied Taylor the opportunity to amend the complaint because he did not clearly describe the amendments he proposed to make.
Even if Taylor had made a proper request, Judge DeMarchi would have denied it. She was “not persuaded that he could amend his complaint to remedy the main deficiency…that the challenged statements are not defamatory as a matter of law.”
On March 17, 2026, the court dismissed the complaint and granted the defendants 60 days to file a motion for attorneys’ fees and costs pursuant to the California anti-SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) statute, Cal. C.C.P. Sec. 425.16(c)(1).
The Takeaway
Even if a plaintiff does not have to prove malice, defamation cases often present insurmountable challenges. Here, some of ESPN’s statements may have been a bit misleading, but they were essentially accurate. Its reporters chose to report the investigatory findings in the aggregate, rather than break down the 2023 and 2024 findings separately. Courts are reluctant to find this sort of editorial discretion actionable because of First Amendment considerations.
Moreover, truth is an absolute defense to a defamation claim. ESPN’s descriptions of the claims and findings against Taylor were basically accurate. As Judge DeMarchi concluded, this makes them “not defamatory as a matter of law.” A broader issue is whether an employer should be held accountable for the wrongful theft and distribution of an employee’s confidential personnel file, but this will not be addressed because Taylor did not pursue a claim against Stanford.
