The owner of a former marijuana testing lab in Eugene filed a defamation lawsuit against anonymous activists after an anti-fascist website exposed her ties to local white nationalists.

Bethany Sherman claims her business OG Analytics cratered and she was forced to flee Oregon after Eugene Antifa publicized her writings in an online message board and social media posts "out of context," according to court documents filed in San Francisco Superior Court on Aug. 30.

The suit does not seek a specified sum in damages.

Records show Sherman also has subpoenaed Weebly, a San Francisco-based company, that hosted the Eugene Antifa website, a move lawyers for the unnamed defendants say is an attempt to identify their clients.

Neither Sherman nor her attorney William Johnson, a self-described white nationalist who chairs the far-right American Freedom Party, responded to a request for comment.

Antifa groups, of which there are now dozens in the U.S., routinely publicize personal information of those they deem threats to people in their communities, a practice called doxing.

Their members, who shield their identifies, also watch individuals, on and offline, and organize demonstrations against people they believe have ties to hate groups or publicly espouse bigoted views.

Last year, Eugene Antifa alleged Sherman had supplied food, including swastika-shaped cookies to celebrate Adolf Hitler's birthday, and support for neo-Nazi gatherings.

Sherman also operated a now-defunct Twitter account under the handle @14th_word, the group alleged. "Our children deserve to be raised in a wholesome environment free of oppression against whites," the account's bio read.

The Anti-Defamation League says "14 words" is a slogan used by neo-Nazis and white supremacists, meaning, "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children."

At the time, Sherman told The Oregonian/OregonLive she was not a neo-Nazi but was proud of being white.

Her business closed almost immediately after the revelations, which caused a firestorm in Eugene. A dozen former employees recently filed a lawsuit against her in Lane County Circuit Court claiming she did not pay them for hours worked.

Though quickly shunned by Oregon's cannabis industry, Sherman was embraced by two Lane County men viewed by national groups tracking extremists as fixtures of the region's white nationalist movement.

One of the men, Jacob Laskey, spent more than a decade in prison for desecrating Eugene's largest synagogue.

Last month, Laskey, who called Sherman "a hero," was sentenced to more than two years for stabbing an acquaintance.

The Eugene-based Civil Liberties Defense Center, which announced Wednesday it was representing the anonymous antifa activists, called Sherman's suit frivolous and has moved to quash the Weebly subpoena.

"The fact that, once Sherman was exposed as a neo-Nazi, plaintiffs lost business and were subject to a boycott should not be surprising to plaintiffs," the defendants wrote in court documents filed Oct. 5.

"Nothing posted on the website at issue is actionable — people simply do not like Nazis and do not want to be affiliated with them or their racist ideology."

-- Shane Dixon Kavanaugh

skavanaugh@oregonian.com

503-294-7632 || @shanedkavanaugh