The Supreme Court on Monday declined to revisit defamation protections created in its landmark 1964 ruling, New York Times v. Sullivan. This precedent has been subject to scrutiny by President Donald Trump and two Republican-appointed justices.
The high court declined to take up an appeal by Steve Wynn, the ex-CEO of Wynn Resorts, of a decision made by the Nevada Supreme Court to dismiss his defamation suit against the Associated Press under a state law meant to shield the Constitution’s First Amendment protections for free speech.
Wynn, a former finance chairman for the Republican National Committee, filed the defamation suit in 2018, accusing the AP news wire and journalists of releasing an article falsely alleging he committed sexual assault in the 1970s. Wynn has denied the assault allegations.
Nevada’s top court found that Wynn could not show that the 2018 report had been published with “actual malice,” prompting Wynn to ask the Supreme Court “whether this court should overturn Sullivan‘s actual-malice standard” and his related dispute.
“In effect, Sullivan encourages individuals to libel first and question never, promising them near-absolute immunity should they do so,” Wynn’s lawyers wrote in a petition to the high court.
In recent years, the Supreme Court has had multiple opportunities to revisit the Sullivan precedent, including a 2021 denial that resulted in dissents from Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, members of the 6-3 Republican-appointed majority. Thomas again urged the court to pivot its approach to the defamation precedent in 2022.
Trump has also been sharply critical of the media’s protections under Sullivan, often dubbing the press “fake news,” and has suffered in his own civil litigation in part because of Sullivan’s protections.
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In 2023, a federal judge tossed Trump’s $475 million defamation lawsuit against CNN when he said the network’s description of his 2020 election fraud claims as the “big lie” falsely associated him with Adolf Hitler. One year prior, Trump and his lawyers invited a judge to reconsider the Sullivan precedent.
Unlike past decisions declining to revisit the Sullivan case, there were no noted dissents from the justices on Monday.
