## Facts

- The Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self Development, a Michigan nonprofit, claimed it owned Rosa Parks’s name and likeness through an assignment from Parks’s estate.
- Target, a national retailer, sold Rosa Parks-related merchandise in stores and online, including multiple books about Parks, a film about Parks, and a commemorative plaque featuring Parks’s photograph and name with descriptive text.
- The Institute did not authorize Target’s use and alleged Target commercially exploited Parks’s identity for profit without compensation.
- The Institute sued under Michigan law, asserting right of publicity, misappropriation, and unjust enrichment.

## Issues

1. Whether Target’s sale of books and a film about Rosa Parks, without consent, violated Michigan’s common-law right of publicity and related torts.
2. Whether Michigan’s qualified privilege for communications on matters of legitimate public interest protected Target’s sale of the books, film, and commemorative plaque.
3. Whether misappropriation and unjust-enrichment claims based on the same conduct could proceed if the public-interest privilege defeated the right-of-publicity claim.

## Decision

- The Eleventh Circuit affirmed summary judgment for Target on all claims.
- The court held that the books, film, and plaque concerned matters of legitimate public interest and were protected by Michigan’s qualified privilege.
- Because the challenged uses were privileged, the Institute’s right-of-publicity claim failed, and the misappropriation and unjust-enrichment claims failed as derivative theories based on the same conduct.

## Legal Principles

- Michigan recognizes a common-law right of publicity, but it is limited by a qualified privilege protecting communications on matters of legitimate public concern.
- The public-interest privilege is not confined to news outlets or non-profit dissemination; it can protect for-profit distribution of expressive works about matters of public significance.
- Selling an expressive work for profit does not, by itself, convert the work into an unprotected commercial advertisement or endorsement.
- When the privilege applies, plaintiffs cannot avoid it by relabeling the same alleged wrong as misappropriation or unjust enrichment.

## Conclusion

The court held that Michigan’s public-interest privilege protected Target’s sale of expressive and commemorative works about Rosa Parks and the civil-rights movement, barring liability for right of publicity and related tort claims despite the retailer’s profit motive.


Rosa & Raymond Parks Inst. for Self Dev. v. Target Corp., 812 F.3d 824 (11th Cir. 2016)