Sarah Palin wins retrial in New York Times defamation case by Reuters

By Jonathan Stempel

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Sarah Palin on Wednesday won her bid for a new trial against the New York Times over an editorial the former Alaska governor said was defamatory.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Palin can try again to prove the Times should be liable for a 2017 editorial that incorrectly linked her to a mass shooting six years earlier, which killed six people and seriously injured Democratic US Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.

Palin’s lawyers argued that U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff, who oversaw the February 2022 trial, wrongly excluded evidence of actual malice by the Times and wrongly instructed jurors to disregard some of that evidence.

Media critics, and Palin herself, saw the case as a possible vehicle to overturn New York Times v. Sullivan, the landmark 1964 US Supreme Court ruling that set a high standard for public figures to prove defamation.

To win, public figures must show that the media demonstrated “actual malice,” meaning they knowingly published false information or reckless disregard for the truth.

Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch called for a reconsideration of the Sullivan decision, with Gorsuch citing changes in the media landscape, including the rise of cable news and online media and the spread of misinformation.

The Times editorial, “America’s Lethal Politics,” addressed gun control and lamented the rise of incendiary political rhetoric.

It was published on June 14, 2017, after a gunman opened fire on a congressional baseball practice in Alexandria, Virginia, injuring Republican US Congressman Steve Scalise and others.

The editorial noted that before the 2011 shooting in Tucson, Arizona, where Giffords was wounded, Palin’s political action committee had published a map with crosshairs of Giffords’s voting district.

Palin objected to the editorial, saying “the link to political incitement was clear,” despite no evidence that the map motivated Arizona gunman Jared Lee Loughner.

James Bennet, then the newspaper’s editorial page editor, had added the challenged language. The Times corrected the editorial the next morning after readers and a columnist complained. Bennet was indicted in Palin’s case.

Palin, 60, the 2008 Republican US vice presidential nominee and governor of Alaska from 2006 to 2009, made the case in biblical terms, testifying that she considered herself a debunker of the Times’ Goliath.

Attorneys for the Times argued that the paper and Bennet never intended to link Palin to the Arizona shooting.

Rakoff added a wrinkle to the case by ruling during jury deliberations that he would dismiss Palin’s case because she had not provided clear and convincing evidence of Times malice.

Some jurors learned what Rakoff had done through news alerts on their cellphones. They said it had no effect on their deliberations, which continued for several more hours.

The case is Palin v. New York Times et al, 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 22-558.