A Massachusetts federal judge dismissed a defamation lawsuit against Bill Cosby on Thursday. The suit was put up by an actress who claimed that Cosby had raped her.

The judge ruled that Cosby was within his rights to proclaim his innocence of the crime.

This civil lawsuit is just one of many cases against Cosby, brought against him by about 50 women who are saying he sexually assaulted them.

Many of the claims are too old for criminal prosecution however he is waiting for trial in Pennsylvania on charges that he sexually assaulted a former basketball coach at Temple University, his alma mater.

The Huffington Post reported:

U.S. District Judge Mark Mastroianni wrote on Thursday that accuser Katherine Mae McKee had not demonstrated that Cosby defamed her simply by denying her claims, made in an interview with the New York Daily News.

“An accused person cannot be foreclosed … from considering the issuance of a simple and unequivocal denial — free from overall defamatory triggers or contextual themes,” Mastroianni wrote.

Cosby built a long career on a family-friendly style of comedy before being hit by the wave of allegations.

Attorneys for the 79-year-old entertainer welcomed the decision and compared it to a Pennsylvania court’s dismissal of a similar civil case last month.

“This is the correct outcome,” said attorney Angela Agrusa. “This order, taken in conjunction with the recent decision in the Hill case, amount to a powerful statement of the law.”

However, in his decision, Mastroianni noted there were differences between the case he was dismissing and a separate lawsuit before him brought by accuser Tamara Green and since joined by six other women.

“There is a subtle, yet fundamental, difference between stating or implying that an accuser’s allegations are completely fabricated (and failing to fully disclose the non-defamatory facts underlying this assertion), as in Green, and disputing an accuser’s credibility based on fully disclosed non-defamatory facts, as here,” Mastroianni wrote.

Read more on the Huff.