WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday turned away Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz’s defamation suit against CNN, refusing to reconsider the high bar for press freedom set in the New York Times vs. Sullivan case.
Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil M. Gorsuch dissented.
The no-comment decision may signal the justices are not anxious to revisit another civil rights era landmark.
But the Dershowitz lawsuit may have been a less than ideal test case.
He sued CNN for $300 million, alleging its commentators distorted his arguments during President Trump’s first impeachment trial before the Senate.
He lost before a federal district judge and the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta. Judges said he had presented no evidence of “actual malice” or knowing falsehoods, citing the doctrine set in the landmark decision.
Dershowitz’s appeal urged the Supreme Court to reconsider and discard the “actual malice” rule or to limit its use against private citizens who are treated as public figures.
In 1964, a unanimous Supreme Court said the 1st Amendment’s protection for the freedom of speech and the press limited state libel verdicts.
An all-white Alabama jury had awarded a $500-million judgment to Montgomery city commissioner L.B. Sullivan over a fund-raising ad for the Rev. Martin Luther King that had appeared in the New York Times.
The ad did not mention Sullivan by name but he said he was defamed by the ad’s criticism of the police.
Reversing that verdict, the court’s opinion said the 1st Amendment was intended to protect debate and criticism of public officials.
With that goal in mind, the justices barred defamation suits over minor or honest mistakes and said plaintiffs must show the defendants displayed “actual malice” by making statements they knew were false or showed a “reckless disregard” for the truth.
The decision was later extended to include public figures like Dershowitz.
In 2020, he defended President Trump’s conduct and told senators it fell short of an impeachable offense.
The House had accused Trump of threatening to withhold military aid to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy into investigating his political rival, Joe Biden, and his son Hunter.
In response to a question about an alleged quid pro quo, Dershowitz said a president can make deals that are in the public interest or his political interest, but not for a corrupt personal benefit.
“If a President does something which he believes will help get him elected — in the public interest — that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment,” he said.
That statement drew sharp and immediate criticism on CNN.
Commentator Paul Begala asserted the “the Dershowitz doctrine would make presidents immune from every criminal act.”
CNN aired the full video of Dershowitz’s testimony and invited him to appear twice in the next two days to clarify his comments.
Months later, he filed a lawsuit alleging defamation and said CNN had perpetrated “a deliberate scheme to defraud its own audience.”
His suit was dismissed by judges who said he did not have enough evidence to send the case to a trial.
“In his zealous and highly scrutinized representation, Dershowitz made a spontaneous series of remarks before Congress that, he says, were misinterpreted by pundits,” Judge Britt Grant, a Trump appointee wrote for the 11th Circuit Court.
“If anything, the evidence shows that they believed in the truth of their reporting, and that they formed their opinions independently. Without evidence of actual malice Dershowitz’s defamation claim cannot go forward,” she said.
Trump and DOJ ask Supreme Court to toss $83 million defamation verdict in E. Jean Carroll case
WASHINGTON — President Trump and the Justice Department are asking the Supreme Court to toss an $83 million defamation verdict won by writer E. Jean Carroll after she accused him of sexual assault, saying he can’t be sued for comments he made while he was president.
It’s the second time Trump has asked the justices to nix damages awarded by a jury to Carroll, a longtime advice columnist and former TV talk show host. The Supreme Court refused in June to hear his appeal of another verdict, for $5 million, that found him liable for sexual abuse and defamation.
The latest case centers on comments Trump made during his first term as president. The Justice Department wants to invoke the Westfall Act, which shields government employees from being sued for doing their jobs.
“Absent this Court’s intervention, the sitting President is facing nearly a hundred million dollars of personal liability for conduct that was well within the scope of his federal office,” federal attorneys wrote. “That alone deserves this Court’s attention.”
The appeal was filed electronically and is expected to be formally docketed with the court Wednesday.
Trump’s lawyers, meanwhile, argued that an appeals court “engaged in procedural contortions” to avoid addressing Trump’s claims that presidential immunity protects him from the $83 million award because he made the statements in question in 2019 while he was president.
The lawyers argued that the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan ruled in a manner that “cries out for this Court’s review in this unprecedented case” and called the damages “grossly excessive.”
“This is the first case in our nation’s history in which a court has imposed damages liability on a president for his conduct in office,” the lawyers wrote.
Carroll’s lawyers have declined to comment on the latest Trump filing.
Trump has long argued he cannot be sued over comments he made about Carroll during his first term where he disavowed knowing her and attacked her motivations for going public with her story in a recent memoir. He’s also asking the Supreme Court justices to reconsider their rejection of his appeal in the $5 million verdict.
The appeal comes about two years after the Supreme Court granted Trump broad immunity from criminal prosecution as a former president.
Carroll testified twice before New York juries that Trump sexually assaulted her in spring 1996 in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman, a luxury retailer across the street from Trump Tower. She first went public with the claims in a 2019 memoir.
She sued Trump for defamation after he accused her of making up the allegation to help book sales, adding that he’d never met her and “she’s not my type.” He has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.
A Manhattan jury awarded her $83 million in damages in January 2024. Lower courts have so far rejected Trump’s appeals to overturn the verdict, though the New York-based appeals court split over the decision and agreed to delay that payout until the Supreme Court weighs in.
In 2023, another jury said Carroll was entitled to $5 million after concluding that Trump had subjected her to sexual abuse in the department store encounter and for defamation for remarks he had made after his first term ended. That judgment has been paid.
The Associated Press does not identify people who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they come forward publicly, as Carroll has done.
Whitehurst and Neumeister write for the Associated Press. Neumeister reported from New York.
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Supreme Court turns away Alan Dershowitz’s defamation suit against CNN
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday turned away Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz’s defamation suit against CNN, refusing to reconsider the high bar for press freedom set in the New York Times vs. Sullivan case.
Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil M. Gorsuch dissented.
The no-comment decision may signal the justices are not anxious to revisit another civil rights era landmark.
But the Dershowitz lawsuit may have been a less than ideal test case.
He sued CNN for $300 million, alleging its commentators distorted his arguments during President Trump’s first impeachment trial before the Senate.
He lost before a federal district judge and the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta. Judges said he had presented no evidence of “actual malice” or knowing falsehoods, citing the doctrine set in the landmark decision.
Dershowitz’s appeal urged the Supreme Court to reconsider and discard the “actual malice” rule or to limit its use against private citizens who are treated as public figures.
In 1964, a unanimous Supreme Court said the 1st Amendment’s protection for the freedom of speech and the press limited state libel verdicts.
An all-white Alabama jury had awarded a $500-million judgment to Montgomery city commissioner L.B. Sullivan over a fund-raising ad for the Rev. Martin Luther King that had appeared in the New York Times.
The ad did not mention Sullivan by name but he said he was defamed by the ad’s criticism of the police.
Reversing that verdict, the court’s opinion said the 1st Amendment was intended to protect debate and criticism of public officials.
With that goal in mind, the justices barred defamation suits over minor or honest mistakes and said plaintiffs must show the defendants displayed “actual malice” by making statements they knew were false or showed a “reckless disregard” for the truth.
The decision was later extended to include public figures like Dershowitz.
In 2020, he defended President Trump’s conduct and told senators it fell short of an impeachable offense.
The House had accused Trump of threatening to withhold military aid to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy into investigating his political rival, Joe Biden, and his son Hunter.
In response to a question about an alleged quid pro quo, Dershowitz said a president can make deals that are in the public interest or his political interest, but not for a corrupt personal benefit.
“If a President does something which he believes will help get him elected — in the public interest — that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment,” he said.
That statement drew sharp and immediate criticism on CNN.
Commentator Paul Begala asserted the “the Dershowitz doctrine would make presidents immune from every criminal act.”
CNN aired the full video of Dershowitz’s testimony and invited him to appear twice in the next two days to clarify his comments.
Months later, he filed a lawsuit alleging defamation and said CNN had perpetrated “a deliberate scheme to defraud its own audience.”
His suit was dismissed by judges who said he did not have enough evidence to send the case to a trial.
“In his zealous and highly scrutinized representation, Dershowitz made a spontaneous series of remarks before Congress that, he says, were misinterpreted by pundits,” Judge Britt Grant, a Trump appointee wrote for the 11th Circuit Court.
“If anything, the evidence shows that they believed in the truth of their reporting, and that they formed their opinions independently. Without evidence of actual malice Dershowitz’s defamation claim cannot go forward,” she said.
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