Sarah Palin wins new trial in NY Times defamation case

NEW YORK – 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 could try again to prove the Times should be liable for a 2017 editorial that wrongly linked her to a mass shooting six years ago that killed six people and injured seriously Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.).

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.

Critics of the media, and Palin herself, have seen the case as a possible means of overturning New York Times v. Sullivan, the landmark 1964 U.S. Supreme Court decision that set a high bar for public figures to tried the slander.

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

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

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

It was released on June 14, 2017, after a gunman opened fire at a congressional baseball practice in Alexandria, Virginia, injuring Congressman Steve Scalise (R-La.) and others.

The editorial noted that before the 2011 shooting in Tucson, Arizona, in which Giffords was injured, Palin’s political action committee released a dot map of Giffords’s constituency.

Palin disputed the editorial, saying “the connection to political motivations was clear” despite there being no evidence that the map motivated Jared Lee Loughner, the Arizona shooter.

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

Palin, 60, the Republican nominee for US vice president in 2008 and governor of Alaska from 2006 to 2009, has addressed the issue in biblical terms, proving she considered herself an underdog to the Times’ Goliath.

Attorneys for the Times argued that the paper and Bennett never intended to link Paul 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 did not provide clear and convincing evidence of the Times’ malice.

Some jurors learned what Rakoff did through news alerts on their cellphones. They said this had no effect on their discussions, which lasted several more hours.

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