Federal Magistrate Judge Virginia K. DeMarchi this week dismissed former Stanford University football coach’s defamation lawsuit against ESPN and a reporter.
The former football coach, Troy Taylor, filed a defamation lawsuit in Aug. 2025 against ESPN and Xuan Thai that alleged a story the news outlet published directly led to Taylor’s dismissal. In March 2025, Thai had reported that Taylor was being investigated for harassing female staffers in the Stanford University athletics department. Taylor allegedly made inappropriate comments and was causing undue stress to the women in the department, a situation which was investigated by the university twice, in 2023 and 2024.
Taylor was fired by Stanford athletics one week after the publication of the original ESPN story, but athletics director Andrew Luck did not comment on the investigations or the ESPN reporting at that time.
Related: Former Stanford Football Coach Sues ESPN for Defamation
According to ESPN, Taylor’s lawsuit focused on story headlines, photo captions and characterizations in the text of the original ESPN article that he said “made it appear as though both Stanford investigations had concluded he engaged in bullying and belittling behavior toward female staffers.”
Taylor disagrees that these two investigations found him guilty of gender discrimination.
Despite Taylor’s protests, in dismissing the case judge DeMarchi said, “The salient point of defendants’ reporting is that the 2023 investigation found that Mr. Taylor engaged in misconduct toward female staff in the workplace. That is a substantially true characterization of the 2023 investigation's and 2024 investigation's findings."
Added DeMarchi, “As none of the statements challenged by Mr. Taylor are defamatory as a matter of law, Mr. Taylor's complaint fails to state a plausible claim for defamation."
By dismissing Taylor’s case, DeMarchi found that ESPN correctly reported the facts and accurately portrayed the findings of Stanford’s internal investigation into Taylor’s conduct.
