Shirley Sherrod sues Andrew Breitbart over video

By Matt DeLong

Conservative activist and blogger Andrew Breitbart's weekend in Washington at the Conservative Political Action Conference was interrupted when he was served with a lawsuit filed by the subject of one of his infamous videos, the New York Times reports. Shirley Sherrod, the ex-Agriculture Department employee whose career was upended in a media firestorm when Breitbart released a selectively edited video of her in July, filed the lawsuit Friday in Washington. The video purported to show Sherrod, who is black, admitting to an NAACP audience that she had discriminated against a white farmer because of his race.

Sherrod abruptly resigned under pressure from the White House, but Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack later offered her an unspecified job at the department when a more complete version of the video surfaced, showing that Sherrod used the anecdote to illustrate how she recognized and overcame her own prejudices. The White House ultimately apologized to Sherrod, who declined to go back to work at USDA. In the lawsuit, Sherrod claims "the video has damaged her reputation and prevented her from continuing her work."

Breitbart said in a statement on his Big Government Web site that he "categorically rejects the transparent effort to chill his constitutionally protected free speech and, to reiterate, looks forward to exercising his full and broad discovery rights."

(Via Huffington Post)

UPDATE: In an interview Monday with Slate's David Weigel, Breitbart said the timing of the lawsuit suggests it is politically motivated.

