New York Times v. Sullivan is a unanimous Supreme Court decision handed down in 1964. It held that for a public figure to win a libel case against a news outlet, she or he would have to prove “actual malice”: that they printed something false either knowingly or with reckless disregard for the truth. For over 50 years, it has been at the bedrock of freedom of the press, all the more so in an age when the president of the United States has labeled the press “the enemy of the people.”
And on Tuesday, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that he’d possibly overturn it.
The context, perhaps ironically, was an appeal stemming from the Bill Cosby case. One of Cosby’s accusers, Kathrine McKee, told her story to the Daily News, and Cosby’s lawyer wrote a letter to the News accusing her of lying.. McKee sued for defamation.
