SACRAMENTO, California — Attorneys representing business owner Karra Crowley, who launched a 2021 libel lawsuit against Black Lives Matter Sacramento founder Tanya Faison, said Tuesday they are dropping the case.
Though the case was to be settled Aug. 16 after Faison published a video apology, attorney Jeffrey Ochrach said his clients considered re-litigating the case after she retracted the apology in a video published the following day.
"Even after learning there was an imposter that police discovered, she still wouldn't apologize," said Ochrach. "There's no real way to get her to admit she was wrong."
The civil lawsuit was filed against the group and Faison in 2021 after the group posted to Facebook claiming the real estate investor sent them racist, hate-filled emails. The Crowleys said they did not write or send the emails and that the email address they came from didn't belong to them.
Crowley contacted Faison and told her she wasn't behind the emails, and she moved forward with a defamation lawsuit after Faison refused to take the post down.
The Crowleys' attorney, Jeffrey Ochrach, later wrote in court documents the Placer County Sheriff's Office served a warrant on Google and the original email led them to a former tenant of the Crowleys — not the couple.
Faison told ABC10 Monday she and Black Lives Matter Sacramento are the victims in the lawsuit, saying the blatantly racist emails sent to her in 2021 were traumatizing.
"We get racist calls every day and emails every couple of weeks, but we only share them when we know the person is an actual person and not just kids playing," she said.
Faison says she kept the 2021 post up because she didn't want to cave in to someone possibly trying to walk back racist statements, though the post has since been removed.
"What else are we supposed to do when we get an email from somebody with their name, email address and business signature? There's no other reason not to think that it was them," she said.
In a news release published Thursday, Faison wrote she initially apologized to the Crowleys because they were seeking land and money from Black Lives Matter Sacramento. Faison says she did not want to risk losing the land.
Volunteers for the social justice organization grow food on the plot near Oak Park purchased in 2021. The land was bought in Faison's name with $69,000 in donations made to Black Lives Matter Sacramento.
She says this was done because Black Lives Matter Sacramento wasn't a nonprofit until later that year.
The property has since turned into a community garden and was transferred to a company Faison co-managed in 2022. Faison says community garden volunteers are aware she owns the land.
Sonia Lewis, a co-founder of Black Lives Matter Sacramento, published an open letter with 29 other past volunteers in 2019 demanding Faison relinquish control of the chapter and administration of its social media after calling into question her use of donation money.
Lewis later announced the Board of Black Lives Matter Sacramento removed Faison as its lead project director and a May 2019 post from Allies of BLM Sacramento says she did not relinquish control of the social media accounts.
Faison then registered the organization as a nonprofit in 2021.
She says she has no plans to transfer the land to Black Lives Matter Sacramento now that it's a certified 501c nonprofit because the transfer could expose the community garden's location although Black Lives Matter Sacramento's Facebook page promoted the location of the community garden as recently as April.
"[The Crowleys] are trying to paint us in a bad light and are trying to get money from us we don't have," said Faison. "We literally have $600 to our name right now. This is how we survive. We literally live off, and when I say live I mean sustain our organization, off of grassroots donations."
According to charity registration filings from the California Attorney General, Black Lives Matter Sacramento reported $138,051 in assets and $25,764 in expenses by the end of 2022. A 990-EZ tax form from 2021 reported $101,284 in total revenue and $18,540 in expenses.
While Ochrach says Faison breached the spirit of her settlement with the Crowleys, he says the business owner and her family have no interest in further pursuing the lawsuit.
"My client's goal was to clear her name. We tried to settle the case at the very beginning just for them to retract the post off their website — and they wouldn't do it. That's why we've been in this litigation for two years," said Ochrach.
