The Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear retired Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz’s defamation lawsuit against CNN after the famed attorney asked the high court to upend a landmark defamation law ruling.
The justices turned away his appeal of a lower court’s ruling that tossed his case against CNN, which is owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. In his appeal after lower courts struck down his petition, Dershowitz had urged the justices to roll back protections against defamation claims that the Supreme Court established in a landmark 1964 ruling, New York Times v. Sullivan.
The court declined to hear the case and did not provide reasoning why. However, Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch disagreed with the decision, with Thomas writing a dissent saying he would challenge the “actual malice” doctrine that was set up in the 1964 case, effectively establishing that there must be evidence showing a news organization was intentionally trying to defame a public figure before that individual can sue for defamation….