The U.S. Supreme Court rejected a filing Monday by attorneys for disgraced casino mogul Steve Wynn that could have overturned or weakened a 60-year-old landmark case that established the actual malice rule in libel law.
Justices declined to hear an appeal by Wynn, the former CEO of Wynn Resorts, about the Nevada Supreme Court’s dismissal last year of a 2018 defamation case he brought against The Associated Press.
Nevada media law professors interviewed last month said the justices could have used the case to weaken First Amendment protections surrounding freedom of the press established in 1964 by New York Times Co. vs. Sullivan, which limited the ability of public officials to sue for defamation.
Under the existing standard for proving libel against a public figure, someone must establish that a person made a statement knowing it was false or with reckless disregard for the truth.
Patrick File, an associate professor of media law at the UNR’s Reynolds School of Journalism, said the petition was directed at two associate justices — Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch — who he said have signaled in previous cases a willingness to reconsider the Sullivan decision.
According to The Hill, Thomas did not publicly dissent Monday when the high court declined in a brief order to take up Wynn’s appeal.
In a filing with the nation’s highest court last month, attorneys for Wynn wrote that many states, including Nevada, have incorporated the actual malice standard into anti-SLAPP (strategic lawsuits against public participation) statutes. Those states require public figure plaintiffs to prove the merits of their case — including actual malice — before any pretrial discovery can take place.
Wynn sued the news organization and a Las Vegas-based reporter, saying he was defamed by an AP story about two women who alleged Wynn committed sexual misconduct.
Wynn, now 83, sold his stock and relinquished his gaming license in February 2018, a few weeks after The Wall Street Journal published an article detailing what it described as a “decades-long pattern of sexual misconduct” by Wynn.
