Sarah Palin loses defamation lawsuit against The New York Times

A federal jury in New York on Tuesday found that The New York Times had not libeled Sarah Palin with an editorial that linked a political action committee of the one-time Republican vice presidential nominee with the 2011 shooting of former Rep. Gabby Giffords of Arizona.

The jury’s verdict came a day after the judge in the case said he would dismiss Palin’s civil lawsuit against the Times.

But Judge Jed Rakoff in making that decision Monday had said he nonetheless would allow the jury to continue its then-ongoing deliberations in the case and reach a verdict.

Rakoff, saying he expected Palin to appeal his dismissal, said an appeals court “would greatly benefit from knowing how the jury would decide it.”

Rakoff’s ruling was based on his finding that the former Alaska governor had failed to provide enough evidence that her reputation had been damaged by the editorial published in June 2017. That editorial was written in response to the shooting of GOP House member Steve Scalise, two Capitol Police officers and another victim at a Virginia baseball field where Republican members of Congress were practicing.

The editorial, entitled “America’s Lethal Politics,” said there was a connection between a 2010 ad by Palin’s PAC and the mass shooting of Giffords and others a year later in Arizona. The ad had shown stylized crosshairs over 20 congressional districts held by Democrats, among them Giffords, that the PAC was targeting to win in the election that year.

But there was no evidence that the shooter of Giffords had been motivated by the map or other Palin rhetoric. And the Times changed the language of the editorial and published a correction after readers noted there was no connection to the Giffords shooting. But the newspaper did not apologize to Palin, who soon after sued the Times.

Palin faced a high bar to prove her case because of a 1964 Supreme Court decision involving The New York Times, which requires public figures to show there was “actual malice” by media companies to sustain a claim of defamation.

Times spokeswoman Danielle Rhoades Ha, in an emailed statement Tuesday, said, “The New York Times welcomes today’s verdict.”

“It is a reaffirmation of a fundamental tenet of American law: public figures should not be permitted to use libel suits to punish or intimidate news organizations that make, acknowledge and swiftly correct unintentional errors,” the spokeswoman said.

“It is gratifying that the jury and the judge understood the legal protections for the news media and our vital role in American society. We also want to thank the jurors for their careful deliberations in a difficult area of the law.”

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