Sarah Palin v. The New York Times: Why the Jury Found No Defamation

TRANSCRIPT

A jury has found that Sarah Palin has not been defamed by The New York Times.

Now, for those who might not know (or remember, since it was a very long time ago), Palin was once a Republican vice presidential candidate and governor of Alaska. At one point, she even hosted her own reality TV show.

Mrs. Palin initially filed her lawsuit in 2017. The lawsuit concerned an opinion piece written by James Bennett and published in The New York Times. The title was “America’s Lethal Politics,” which, of course, I had to immediately read after hearing it was being sued over.

The Opinion Piece at the Center of the Lawsuit

The op-ed addresses the issue of gun violence in the United States and originally stated the following:

“In 2011, when Jared Lee Loughner opened fire in a supermarket parking lot, grievously wounding Representative Gabby Giffords and killing six people, including a nine-year-old girl, the link to political incitement was clear. Before the shooting, Sarah Palin’s political action committee circulated a map of targeted electoral districts that put Mrs. Giffords and 19 other Democrats under stylized crosshairs.”

If you try to look up the article now, you will notice that it makes no reference to the words Palin alleges to be defamatory. That is because The New York Times corrected the piece within 19 hours of publication and admitted its wording was flawed. The paper also issued a public statement on Twitter:

“We got an important fact wrong, incorrectly linking political incitement in the 2011 shooting of Giffords. No link was ever established.”

Palin’s Defamation Claim

The legal drama in this case is extensive. In her complaint, Palin asserts that The Times falsely claimed she clearly and directly incited the 2011 assault against Representative Giffords in Arizona. She argues that the op-ed defamed her by falsely accusing her of inciting gun violence in a political context.

As the complaint alleges, in January 2011, there were unsubstantiated rumors about a possible connection between Palin and Loughner’s crime. These rumors were tied to the map posted online, which depicted congressional districts that Republicans were targeting for victory in an upcoming election.

Six years later, after various left-wing blogs had allegedly taken political hits against Palin and made numerous jokes at her expense, The Times allegedly fabricated a supposed pattern of politically incited violence against members of Congress. According to the complaint, this revived a debunked connection between Palin’s political activities and Loughner’s 2011 rampage in Arizona.

The Legal Standard of “Actual Malice”

To find The Times liable for defamation, the jury would have needed to find that the publication acted with actual malice. In the United States, media defendants have a higher level of legal protection in order to preserve First Amendment values. Freedom of the press and freedom of speech are central to that protection.

A plaintiff in a case involving a media defendant must prove that the publisher either knew the statement was false or acted with such reckless disregard for the truth that no reasonable person could have believed it was accurate.

What Happened in Court

The district court first dismissed Palin’s case in 2017. She appealed, and in 2019 the Second Circuit Court found that she had stated a valid defamation claim. The case was sent back to the trial court to be heard.

It is important to note that the Second Circuit did not rule on the merits of the case. That is the job of the trial court and the jury.

In February 2022, a jury found that The New York Times was not liable to Palin for defamation. However, things got messy procedurally. The trial court had already dismissed the case but allowed the jury to reach a verdict anyway.

There was a question about whether jurors received push notifications alerting them to the court’s ruling during the trial and whether that affected their decision to find The Times not liable. This issue, along with other procedural and evidentiary objections, led Palin and her legal team to appeal once again.

The Second Circuit Court vacated both the district court’s judgment and the jury’s verdict, citing a series of procedural and evidentiary errors. The case was sent back to the trial court again.

Final Verdict

A second jury also found that The Times was not liable for defamation in 2025. After receiving the verdict, Palin posted on X that she plans to, quote, “keep asking the press to quit making things up.”

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