Grapevine

Philippine court orders regulator to restore licence of news site Rappler

Rappler calls decision to overturn shutdown order ‘vindication after a tortuous eight years of harassment’.

A Philippine court has ordered the country’s corporate regulator to restore the licence of Rappler, a news site co-founded by Nobel laureate Maria Ressa, a prominent critic of former President Rodrigo Duterte.

Ressa and Rappler have been fighting multiple court cases filed during Duterte’s administration.

The Court of Appeals, in a decision dated July 23 but only released to the media on Friday, reversed a previous ruling by the Philippine Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that had ordered the shutdown of Rappler.

The SEC in 2018 rescinded the operating licence of Rappler for violating foreign equity restrictions on domestic media when it sold depositary rights to a foreign entity. The decision was upheld in 2022, days before Duterte left office.