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UPDATE (Feb. 15, 2022, 2:47 p.m. ET): A Manhattan jury on Tuesday found The New York Times not liable in Sarah Palin’s defamation lawsuit. Immediately after the verdict was read, Judge Jed Rakoff informed the jurors that he decided earlier to dismiss the lawsuit.
A federal judge on Monday said he planned to dismiss Sarah Palin’s libel lawsuit against The New York Times, arguing she failed to prove that the outlet had acted with “actual malice” in a 2017 editorial linking her political rhetoric to a mass shooting.
“The law here sets a very high standard for actual malice, and in this case the court finds that that standard has not been met,” said U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff in Manhattan.
A jury is still deliberating, but Rakoff said he planned to dismiss the lawsuit regardless. His decision to wait on a verdict anyway is meant to guide an appeals court on how it should rule in the likely event Palin files an appeal, he said.
The loss is one step in an ongoing media crusade. First Amendment supporters shouldn’t rejoice just yet.
As I wrote last week, Palin’s lawsuit was widely seen by legal experts as a long shot in extracting any kind of recompense from the Times. First Amendment protections give the press broad latitude to criticize public figures. And even when the media make mistakes, they’re normally able to avoid legal liability unless it’s proven they intentionally published false information. Palin’s attorneys argued that the Times did just that when it published an editorial connecting violent rhetoric from a Palin-linked group to a 2011 mass shooting in Tucson, Arizona.
Her lawyers acknowledged during the trial that winning the suit would be an “uphill battle,” but it’s widely understood Palin hopes to get her case before a higher court — the Supreme Court, perhaps — where she can potentially make her argument in front of conservative judges more sympathetic to her cause.
In that setting, Palin’s case moves from laughable sideshow to a serious First Amendment threat in less time than it takes to say “you betcha.” There’s no telling for sure how an appeals court would rule in the case, but some conservative justices on the Supreme Court — specifically Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas — have shown an openness to altering U.S. libel law to make it easier to sue media outlets. And with two other Trump appointees on the court (along with the curmudgeon Samuel Alito), there’s no guarantee press freedoms would remain intact if Palin’s suit reaches the high court.
So we can all take pleasure in knowing Rakoff handed Palin a loss, but in this case, the loss is one step in an ongoing media crusade. First Amendment supporters shouldn’t rejoice just yet.
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