The Court declines to join the Dersh’s war on NYT v. Sullivan
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The Supreme Court refused to hear famed law professor and attorney Alan Dershowitz’s defamation claim against CNN on Monday, effectively upholding long-standing protections for the news media when reporting on public figures.
Having lost in lower courts, Dershowitz had asked the justices to revisit the landmark 1964 New York Times v. Sullivan ruling, which said there must be evidence of “actual malice” on a news organization’s part in order for a public figure to pursue a defamation claim.
The court declined to hear the case, a decision with which conservative justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch disagreed. Thomas wrote in a brief dissent that the standard to prove an actual malice claim is too “exacting.”
“The ‘actual malice’ standard for public figures ‘bears ‘no relation to the text, history, or structure of the Constitution,’” Thomas wrote.
I have been concerned for a while that the Supreme Court’s other Republicans would join Thomas and Gorsuch in adding Sullivan to the Roberts Court’s Doctrinal Demolition Derby, but so far it’s held. And, sadly, the Dersh is someone whom the Supreme Court’s Republicans would regard as a sympathetic plaintiff.