SCOTUS HAS EYE ON LIBEL

1964 ruling at issue

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas signaled his willingness on Monday to undo a 1964 ruling that makes it difficult to sue media outlets for libel.

The conservative justice, who was one of five votes to overturn the landmark abortion ruling Roe v. Wade on Friday, issued a dissenting opinion after the high court refused to hear a case brought by a Christian group that sued the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Coral Ridge Ministries Media filed suit against the SPLC, a left-leaning watchdog, after it labeled the Christian organization a hate group.

The lawsuit sought to upend the precedent established by New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, the 1964 court case which set a high bar for public officials to sue for defamation.

“I would grant certiorari in this case to revisit the ‘actual malice’ standard,” Thomas wrote in his dissent.

“This case is one of many showing how New York Times and its progeny have allowed media organizations and interest groups ‘to cast false aspersions on public figures with near impunity.’”

Thomas wrote: “SPLC’s ‘hate group’ designation lumped Coral Ridge’s Christian ministry with groups like the Ku Klux Klan and Neo-Nazis.”

The justice continued: “Nonetheless, unable to satisfy the ‘almost impossible’ actual-malice standard this Court has imposed, Coral Ridge could not hold SPLC to account for what it maintains is a blatant falsehood.”

Gorsuch concurs

Another conservative justice, Neil Gorsuch, concurred with Thomas’ view that New York Times v. Sullivan should be revisited.

The Supreme Court decided Sullivan in 1964 after a federal district court in Alabama found that a civil-rights organization’s ad in The New York Times had damaged the reputation of an Alabama sheriff who was identified by implication in the print display.

Sullivan established a higher standard for public officials and public figures to prove defamation of character.

They would have to prove actual malice on the part of the accused defamer, that the publication had acted with “reckless disregard for the truth.”