Steelman · slot A
The high bar exists for a reason
A defamation and tort defense lawyer would argue —IIED is a narrow tort precisely because hurt feelings are universal and lawsuits over them would swallow ordinary speech. The doctrine demands conduct beyond all bounds of decency, and what we have here is unaltered footage of a competitive hockey game — a public event the family itself acknowledges is routinely livestreamed with commentary — showing a player's on-ice meltdown. The boy isn't named, his face is pixelated, and nothing on his jersey identifies him. Compare that to the cases where Illinois courts have actually sustained IIED claims: a newspaper photographing a mother's dead son after barring her from the room, or radio hosts mocking a child's medical deformity by name across Chicago. The gap is enormous, and collapsing it would turn every unkind repost into a federal case.