A Colorado legislator has dropped a defamation lawsuit he filed against two women who accused him of sexual harassment.

Rep. Ron Weinberg and the two women, Jacqueline Anderson and Heather Booth, agreed to end the suit in a Friday joint filing that was submitted a week before all three parties were set to testify in court. The dismissal was approved by a judge later that day.

No settlement or confidentiality agreements were part of the joint filing, Anderson said in an interview.

A Loveland Republican, Weinberg filed the suit in August, weeks after Anderson and Booth publicly accused him of making sexual comments to them at public events in 2021 and 2022, when he was the chair of the Larimer County Republican Party but before he entered the legislature. Weinberg denied the allegations and sued both women for libel and slander.

The women, in turn, denied that their statements were false, and they moved to dismiss the lawsuit under Colorado’s anti-SLAPP statute.

Anti-SLAPP laws are generally used to prevent people from using expensive defamation suits to target or punish others for their speech. The laws require that the person filing the lawsuit demonstrate that they’re reasonably likely to win the case; otherwise, the case can be dismissed, and the defendants may receive attorneys’ fees.

The case was set for a hearing on the anti-SLAPP motions this Friday. Weinberg, Anderson and Booth had all indicated that they would testify, along with several other people who’d filed affidavits seeking to support or undercut the women’s harassment allegations.

Witnesses in the case included the president of the Leadership Program of the Rockies, which ran the events at which Weinberg allegedly made the comments, as well as Amy Parks, who had been challenging Weinberg for his Loveland-based seat in this year’s Republican primary until Weinberg announced that he would not run for reelection. Rep. Brandi Bradley, a Republican lawmaker who filed a complaint against Weinberg last summer, was also on Booth’s potential witness list.

On Monday, Weinberg told The Denver Post that he decided to drop the case because he didn’t believe he would get the chance to defend himself in court. He provided an email from one of the women’s attorneys, who noted a separate active investigation into Weinberg’s campaign spending and that Weinberg’s reputation would likely suffer further if the anti-SLAPP hearing took place.