Sarah Palin loses defamation retrial against NYT
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Sarah Palin arrives at the U.S. District Court in downtown Manhattan on April 21, 2025. Photo: BG048/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images
A jury on Tuesday ruled against former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin in a rare retrial of her 2017 defamation lawsuit against the New York Times.
Why it matters: The ruling isn't shocking, given that a federal judge and jury already rejected Palin's libel claims against the Times in a 2022 trial.
Zoom in: After nearly two hours of deliberations, a federal jury ruled that the Times was not guilty of libel claims brought against it by Palin for a 2017 editorial that falsely linked her to a 2011 mass shooting.
- Throughout this trial and the original 2022 trial, the Times asserted that the inaccurate link made in the editorial was a mistake.
- It issued a formal correction of the piece, titled "America's Lethal Politics," two days after it was originally published on June 14.
- In a statement, a Times spokesperson said, "We want to thank the jurors for their careful deliberations. The decision reaffirms an important tenet of American law: publishers are not liable for honest mistakes."
Between the lines: Palin and her legal team argued that the Times and its former editorial page editor James Bennet for libel used "actual malice" in publishing the editorial.
- There is a very high bar for plaintiffs to meet the actual malice standard, which was established by the landmark 1964 New York Times v. Sullivan case.
- The standard protects news outlets from liability under the First Amendment, even when they publish false statements, as long as they did not do so knowingly and recklessly.
Catch up quick: The outcome of Tuesday's trial ends a long legal battle between the Times and Palin.
- A federal appeal court granted Palin's request for a retrial last year, citing errors made by the trial judge overseeing the case, including dismissing the case while jurors were still deliberating their verdict in 2022.
The big picture: Conservatives, including Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, have called for the nation's top court to possibly revisit the actual malice legal standard, arguing the media landscape has shifted significantly over the past 60 years.
- But the court has turned down opportunities to review challenges to the precedent several times over the past few years.
- Most recently, it declined to hear a defamation case from Republican casino mogul Steve Wynn.
What's next: Palin said while leaving the courtroom Tuesday that she doesn't know if she plans to appeal the case again.
