Appeals Court Revives Sarah Palin’s Defamation Lawsuit Against New York Times

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled Wednesday that a district court had improperly dismissed former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s defamation lawsuit against the New York Times, allowing a new trial of the case.

As Breitbart News reported in February 2022, U.S. Judge Jed S. Rakoff, a Bill Clinton appointee to the federal bench in the Southern District of New York, dismissed the case even as jurors were still deliberating over the verdict.

Palin sued the Times over a 2017 editorial in which it said that she had inspired the 2011 mass shooting in Tucson, Arizona. Judge Rakoff initially dismissed the case, but it was revived by a federal appeals court. After the presentation of arguments in initial motions, Rakoff decided that Palin had enough evidence to allow the case to go to trial — a rarity in defamation suits by public figures against the media, since the standard of proving “actual malice” is usually too high for plaintiffs to clear.

Moreover, Rakoff sent the case to the jury after closing arguments last week. But on Monday, as NPR’s David Folkenflik reported, he had second thoughts, and said Palin failed to meet the “actual malice” standard because of the Times‘s correction, and then-editorial page editor James Bennet’s contrition.

The jury found against Palin and in favor of the Times, but only after it learned of Rakoff’s decision to dismiss the case.

A three-judge panel of the Second Circuit — including two George W. Bush appointees, and one Donald Trump appointee — held Wednesday that Rakoff had acted improperly, and ordered a new trial.

From the decision:

We first reinstated the case in August 2019 following an initial dismissal by the district court (Rakoff, J.) under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6). Palin’s claim was subsequently tried before a jury but, while the jury was deliberating, the district court dismissed the case again—this time under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 50. We conclude that the district court’s Rule 50 ruling improperly intruded on the province of the jury by making credibility determinations, weighing evidence, and ignoring facts or inferences that a reasonable juror could plausibly have found to support Palin’s case.

…

The jury is sacrosanct in our legal system, and we have a duty to protect its constitutional role, both by ensuring that the jury’s role is not usurped by judges and by making certain that juries are provided with relevant proffered evidence and properly instructed on the law.

…

[W]e VACATE both the district court’s Rule 50 judgment and the jury’s verdict and REMAND the case to the district court for further proceedings, including a new trial, consistent with this opinion.

ABC News quoted the Times‘ reaction: “This decision is disappointing. We’re confident we will prevail in a retrial.”

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of “”The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days,” available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of “The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency,” now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.