Sarah Palin wins new trial in New York Times defamation case

By Jonathan Stempel

NEW YORK (Reuters) -Sarah Palin on Wednesday won her bid for a new trial against the New York Times over an editorial that the former Alaska governor said was defamatory.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Palin can try again to prove that the Times should be liable for a 2017 editorial that incorrectly linked her to a mass shooting six years earlier that killed six people and seriously wounded Democratic U.S. congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.

Writing for a three-judge panel, Circuit Judge John Walker agreed with Palin that U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff had made several errors that tainted the February 2022 trial against the Times and former editorial page editor James Bennet.

The appeals court said Rakoff wrongly excluded evidence that Palin believed reflected the Times’ “actual malice” in publishing the editorial, and wrongly instructed jurors on how much proof was needed for the Times to be liable.

It also said the verdict was likely tainted after jurors learned during deliberations, through news alerts on their cellphones, that Rakoff would dismiss Palin’s case because she did not offer clear and convincing evidence of malice.

“The jury is sacrosanct in our legal system, and we have a duty to protect its constitutional role, both by ensuring that the jury’s role is not usurped by judges and by making certain that juries are provided with relevant proffered evidence and properly instructed on the law,” Walker wrote.

Lawyers for the Times and Palin did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Media critics, and Palin herself, have viewed the case as a possible vehicle to overturn New York Times v. Sullivan, the landmark 1964 U.S. Supreme Court decision that set a high bar for public figures to prove defamation.

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

Supreme Court justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch have urged a reconsideration of the Sullivan decision, with Gorsuch citing changes in the media landscape, including the growth of cable TV news and online media and the spread of disinformation.

‘AMERICA’S LETHAL POLITICS’

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

It was published on June 14, 2017, after a gunman opened fire at a congressional baseball practice in Alexandria, Virginia, injuring Republican U.S. congressman Steve Scalise and others.

The editorial noted that, before the 2011 shooting in Tucson, Arizona, where Giffords was wounded, Palin’s political action committee published a map with crosshairs over Giffords’ election district.

Palin objected to the editorial’s original language that “the link to political incitement was clear,” despite there being no evidence that the map had motivated Jared Lee Loughner, the Arizona gunman.

The phrase had been added by Bennet. The Times corrected the editorial the next morning, removing the phrase, after readers and a columnist complained. Lawyers for the newspaper said neither the Times nor Bennet had intended to link Palin to the Arizona shooting.

Palin, 60, was the Republican U.S. vice presidential candidate in 2008 and Alaska governor from 2006 to 2009.

Jurors said after the verdict that receiving cellphone “push notifications” about Rakoff’s dismissal of Palin’s case had no effect on their deliberations, which lasted another few hours.

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