September 9, 2024
Palin, 60, the Republican U.S. vice presidential candidate in 2008 and Alaska governor from 2006 to 2009, has cast the case in biblical terms, testifying that she considered herself an underdog to the Times’ Goliath.

Sarah Palin scores victory with new trial in NY Times defamation case

NEW YORK — 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.

Lawyers for Palin argued that U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff, who oversaw the February 2022 trial, wrongly excluded evidence of the Times’ actual malice and wrongly instructed jurors to disregard some of that evidence.

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 knowingly published false information or had reckless disregard for the truth.

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