A&E Goes After Wendy Williams' Guardian For Interfering with Free Speech

Wendy Williams' guardian is taking away one of Wendy's last chances to speak directly to her fans, and she's trying to cover for her own failure to protect Wendy .. this according to a new lawsuit filed by A+E Networks.

The popular cable channel -- which aired its controversial documentary "Where is Wendy Williams?" back in February -- responded to Williams' guardian Sabrina Morrissey's lawsuit attempting to get their documentary shut down back in February.

A+E says Sabrina's exceeding her authority by trying to get parts of the documentary changed and redacted ... claiming Wendy signed a talent agreement long before she was mentally incapacitated as Sabrina claims.

Furthermore, the company claims there is no law against doing a documentary on a subject with dementia ... so, even if she hadn't signed the talent agreement -- which they reiterate she did -- they'd still done nothing wrong.

As for the countersuit, A+E is suing Sabrina for attempting to infringe upon the company's First Amendment rights ... specifically pointing to Morrissey's original suit back in February trying to get a judge to put a stop to the doc coming out.

A+E says basically Morrissey has forced their production company to defend itself against meritless claims arising from the creation of the documentary ... and, the Constitution says that's a no-go.

Put succinctly in the lawsuit ... A+E says Sabrina's trying to deny Wendy "one of her last chances to exercise her autonomy and honestly reach her fans in exactly the frank and unfiltered manner that was the hallmark of her career."

As we told you, Sabrina asked a court to force producers to redact some non-public information in the documentary -- revealing in her filing Wendy is "permanently incapacitated" from her dementia battle.