{"id":162561,"date":"2026-04-10T17:51:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-10T17:51:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/162561\/"},"modified":"2026-04-10T17:51:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T17:51:10","slug":"former-easton-council-member-sultanas-defamation-suit-appeal-dismissed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/162561\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Easton council member Sultana’s defamation suit appeal dismissed"},"content":{"rendered":"

A state appeals court has dismissed former Easton City Council member Taiba Sultana\u2019s defamation lawsuit in which she alleged yard signs and social media posts caused her to lose her race for the state House in 2024.<\/p>\n

In a one-sentence order Friday, the Superior Court of Pennsylvania marked Sultana\u2019s suit against PA Citizens PAC dismissed because she did not file necessary briefs.<\/p>\n

A Northampton County judge previously dismissed the suit<\/a>, saying Sultana failed to prove that the PAC, chaired by attorney Raymond Lahoud, made defamatory statements that led to Sultana losing the Democratic primary to incumbent Robert Freeman in the Easton-based 136th District.<\/p>\n

Sultana\u2019s suit alleged the PAC spread lies about her, but the county judge said she did not establish that the statements were false or had a \u201creckless disregard for the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A state appeals court has dismissed former Easton City Council member Taiba Sultana\u2019s defamation lawsuit in which she…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":162562,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154,182,139,432],"class_list":["post-162561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-top-stories-tmc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162561"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162561\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/162562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}