Survivor Law Creator Says Blake Lively Is Using It All Wrong

When Victoria Burke wrote California’s survivor-protection law, she had a specific mission in mind: shield people brave enough to speak up about sexual assault, harassment, and discrimination from getting sued into silence. Now, watching Blake Lively lean heavily on that same legislation in her legal battle with Justin Baldoni, Burke is watching her creation get weaponized in ways she never intended—and she’s not staying quiet about it.

Burke appeared on The Megyn Kelly Show Tuesday to explain why Lively’s legal strategy fundamentally misuses the law’s purpose. The crux of her concern: the legislation was designed to protect survivors who come forward, not to become a blanket shield that blocks defamation claims entirely. There’s a critical difference, and one that gets lost when a high-profile case starts using the statute as a catch-all legal defense.

The backstory matters here. Burke only discovered the need for this law after learning she herself could face defamation charges simply for speaking publicly about her own sexual assault. That realization sent her on a year-long research dive into lawsuits against survivors before she took her proposal to lawmakers. The law she crafted—refined with input from advocacy groups and the ACLU—was supposed to strike a delicate balance: empower accusers while still preserving legitimate legal recourse for those falsely accused.

Burke points to the Johnny Depp-Amber Heard case as an example of a defamation claim she believes could have still succeeded under the law’s original framework. That distinction is everything. If every accusation automatically becomes legally untouchable, the pendulum swings too far in the other direction, potentially shielding false claims from scrutiny. That’s not what the bill was meant to do.

The irony is sharp: a law written to protect vulnerable people from legal intimidation is now being deployed in a messy Hollywood dispute between two well-resourced figures. Burke’s public criticism adds serious weight to the conversation—she’s the architect, and she’s saying the blueprint is being misread. Whether that changes anything in the Lively-Baldoni legal war remains to be seen, but it’s the kind of pushback that forces both sides to reckon with whether they’re using the law as intended or just bending it to fit their strategy.