Sarah Palin loses New York Times libel lawsuit

The judge’s dismissal was due to his finding that Palin had failed to show enough evidence that her reputation had been damaged by the June 2017 editorial.

Tuesday’s verdict came three weeks after the trial’s kickoff was postponed by Palin’s positive test for Covid-19, the second time she had contracted the coronavirus.

Palin, who opposes Covid vaccinations, later dined in outdoor seating in restaurants with others in New York, without any of them wearing masks.

The Times editorial that sparked her suit was written in response to the shooting in June 2017 of then-House Majority Whip Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, two Capitol Police special agents, and two other people at a Virginia baseball field where GOP lawmakers were practicing.

The editorial, entitled “America’s Lethal Politics,” said there was a connection between a 2010 ad by Palin’s PAC and the mass shooting of Giffords and others a year later in Arizona.

The ad had shown stylized crosshairs over 20 congressional districts held by Democrats, among them Giffords, that the PAC was targeting to win in the election that year.

But there was no evidence that the man who shot Giffords was motivated by the map or other rhetoric by Palin.

The Times within less than a day changed the language of the editorial and published a correction after readers noted there was no connection to the Giffords shooting. But the newspaper did not apologize to Palin, who soon after filed her lawsuit.

Palin faced a high bar to prove her case because of a 1964 Supreme Court decision, involving another suit against The Times, which requires public figures to show there was “actual malice” by media companies to sustain defamation claims.

Times spokeswoman Danielle Rhoades Ha, in an emailed statement Tuesday, said, “The New York Times welcomes today’s verdict.”

“It is a reaffirmation of a fundamental tenet of American law: public figures should not be permitted to use libel suits to punish or intimidate news organizations that make, acknowledge and swiftly correct unintentional errors,” the spokeswoman said.

“It is gratifying that the jury and the judge understood the legal protections for the news media and our vital role in American society. We also want to thank the jurors for their careful deliberations in a difficult area of the law.”