John Oliver and Last Week Tonight have notched their latest legal victory.
A federal judge has dismissed a defamation lawsuit brought against Oliver and his HBO show’s production company, Partially Important Productions, over a 2024 Medicaid segment—preserving what Oliver has described as the show’s undefeated record in court.
As is often the case with legal proceedings of this nature, the win was a long time coming. The segment at the center of the suit aired in April 2024. Dr. Brian Morley, a former medical director for AmeriHealth Caritas, filed his lawsuit nearly a year later, in March 2025. And now U.S. District Judge Ronnie Abrams has dismissed the case, more than two years after the original broadcast.
The segment itself was a characteristically blistering takedown of privatized Medicaid programs. As part of that critique, Oliver discussed the cancellation of nursing services for Louis Facenda, an Iowa man with cerebral palsy who, according to the segment, lost services including in-home bathing and diaper-changing after a managed care organization got involved.
Oliver then turned to Dr. Brian Morley, who worked for AmeriHealth Caritas, the managed care organization that had been entrusted with Iowa’s privatized Medicaid program. Introducing audio from a 2017 Medicaid coverage hearing involving another Iowa patient with cerebral palsy, Nathan McDonald, Oliver said viewers were about to hear “a doctor at AmeriHealth” explaining “the corporate thinking” around “the necessity of keeping people clean.”
The clip Oliver played included Morley saying: “People have bowel movements every day where they don’t completely clean themselves… People are allowed to be dirty… You know, I would allow him to be a little dirty for a couple of days.” Oliver then told viewers that when he first heard the clip, he assumed it had to be out of context—but that after getting the full hearing, “he said it, he meant it,” before adding that it made him want to “punch a hole in the wall.”
In the portion of the segment central to the lawsuit, above, Oliver’s outrage at Morley’s testimony turned profane. “F*ck that doctor with a rusty canoe,” Oliver said, adding that “people are allowed to be a little dirty sometimes, apparently that’s doctor’s f*cking orders.”
Morley argued that the show took his comments out of context and falsely blurred the distinction between the two Iowa Medicaid patients: Facenda, whose loss of in-home bathing and diaper-changing services was featured in Oliver’s segment, and McDonald, whose 2017 coverage hearing included Morley’s testimony. Morley claimed the segment falsely implied that he had illegally denied care to one or both men, and that he had testified it was acceptable for patients who wear diapers or cannot bathe themselves to be left sitting in fecal matter for days.
Abrams wasn’t persuaded.
In her June 2 ruling, Abrams found that Oliver’s individual statements were not defamatory, and that the segment’s broader implication was not defamatory either. The judge ruled that the show’s description of Morley’s testimony was substantially accurate, that some of Oliver’s remarks were protected opinion, and that other parts were covered by New York’s fair report privilege for reports of official proceedings.
The key dispute came down to whether Oliver had unfairly described McDonald as “similar” to Facenda. Morley argued that Facenda wore a diaper and McDonald did not, making Oliver’s comparison misleading. Abrams rejected that argument, finding that the two men were similar enough for the point Oliver was making: both had cerebral palsy, significant mobility issues, and needed help cleaning themselves.
“In this Court’s view,” Abrams wrote, “the trauma and loss of human dignity that befalls a man with cerebral palsy who has trouble cleaning himself and is left for days in his own fecal matter is the same, regardless of whether or not he wears a diaper.”
The ruling gives Last Week Tonight another courtroom win in a defamation case, years after the show’s fight with coal executive Robert Murray. Murray Energy memorably sued Oliver, HBO, and others over a 2017 coal-industry segment; the case was dismissed in 2018, and the suit was later dropped while Murray Energy was in bankruptcy. Oliver revisited the saga two years later in his “SLAPP Suits” episode, turning the experience into both a warning about speech-chilling lawsuits and, because this was Last Week Tonight, a musical number titled “Eat Shit, Bob!”
Oliver’s latest legal victory is another testament to Last Week Tonight’s famously rigorous legal vetting process, which has become almost as central to the show’s identity as its deep-dive research and elaborately profane punchlines. Oliver has said the show works with lawyers “constantly,” though he has joked that he and the lawyers see their mission slightly differently: “I think they think their job is to stop us from getting sued, and I think their job is to make sure that when we are sued, we win.”
In this case, the latter view held up.
Abrams dismissed Morley’s complaint and directed the clerk to close the case. She did, however, deny Oliver and Partially Important Productions’ request for attorneys’ fees under New York’s anti-SLAPP law, ruling that they had not sought them through the proper procedural vehicle.
Read the full ruling below.
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