The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a case that tried to challenge a decision from 1964 that protects news outlets from being sued for publishing damaging information about public figures.
In the case of New York Times v. Sullivan, the Supreme Court said that a plaintiff must show “actual malice” in order to sue the press for defamation. Conservative justices have asked the court to review that decision.
In the case of Sullivan, the court said that news outlets are not responsible if they publish false information as long as they do not do so knowingly and recklessly, without checking to see if it is true, Axios reported.
Steve Wynn, a casino mogul and supporter of President Trump, sued the Associated Press for libel. He wanted to change the basic case law that has been protecting reporters from libel suits for decades.
Wynn, who was also the finance chair of the Republican National Committee, sued the AP in 2018 after it published a story about claims of sexual misconduct from the 1970s against him.
After Nevada’s highest court threw out the lawsuit, he took it to the Supreme Court.
“The actual malice standard … exists to give even more breadth when you’re talking about famous people, people with power in government, or people just with more power in society,” First Amendment expert Kevin Goldberg previously told Axios.
“The bar is intentionally high to dissuade people from ever filing these lawsuits,” he added.
Conservatives on the court is still motivated to overturn Sullivan, but over the past several years, the Supreme Court has rejected multiple cases that could have provided it with the opportunity to do so.
The court does not appear to have enough votes to revisit the matter, at least not at this time or in the cases they have been given thus far.
This comes as reports have surfaced this year about a possible movement from groups trying to force some U.S. Supreme Court justices into retirement—but, so far, it’s not working.
Justice Samuel Alito recently revealed that he has no plans to step down from the nation’s highest court.
“Despite what some people may think, this is a man who has never thought about this job from a political perspective,” said one person close to Alito. “The idea that he’s going to retire for political considerations is not consistent with who he is.”
Sources who spoke to the Wall Street Journal “tamped down speculation among legal activists that the 74-year-old jurist was readying to retire so that President Donald Trump could fill his seat with a younger conservative.”
Some have also pushed for liberal Justice Sotomayor to retire. She’s the third-oldest judge on the nine-member bench and has long been public about living her life with type 1 diabetes.
Sources told the BBC that Sotomayor does not plan to go anywhere.
“This is no time to lose her important voice on the court,” one person told the Wall Street Journal, adding that she “takes better care of herself than anyone I know. She’s in great health, and the court needs her now more than ever,” a source said.
Earlier this year, Vermont Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders acknowledged to NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he had heard “a little bit” of talk about Sotomayor being asked to step aside but said calls for her to resign are not “sensible.”
The three eldest justices on the Supreme Court are in their 70s, and the election of Trump last week sparked new debates about the court’s future.
Republicans will be able to replace vacancies without having to reach an agreement with Democrats for at least two years since they control both the Senate and the White House.
Republicans have argued that it would be wise for Alito, who was appointed by President George W. Bush in 2006, and Justice Clarence Thomas, who is 76 and was appointed by President George H.W. Bush in 1991, to resign in favor of younger candidates who could continue the court’s conservative stance for many years to come.
According to public opinion studies, most Americans believe that the Supreme Court is politically biased. However, according to those with knowledge of the situation, the justices of all ideological stripes want to view themselves as separate from partisan politics, and Washington’s postelection chitchat is becoming annoying within the court.
Trump appointed three justices in his first term, solidifying the conservatives’ 6-3 majority on the court.
Alito has played a pivotal role in the rise of conservatism. He authored the opinion in 2022 that overturned Roe v. Wade, which had established women’s right to an abortion before fetal viability in 1973, fulfilling a long-standing objective that had previously been thought unachievable.
