Defamation case against Sarah Palin: Former Alaska governor gets new hearing in lawsuit against New York Times

NEW YORK — A federal appeals court on Wednesday reinstated Sarah Palin's defamation lawsuit against The New York Times, finding that several key issues “call into question the credibility” of the original ruling.

The U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals found that the trial judge had dismissed the case before the jury reached a verdict. The jury was allowed to continue deliberating before ultimately finding the newspaper not liable in February 2022.

“Unfortunately, several key issues in the trial call into question the reliability of this verdict – particularly the erroneous exclusion of evidence, an inaccurate jury instruction, a legally erroneous answer to a jury question during deliberations, and the fact that the jury learned of the district court's Rule 50 dismissal decision during deliberations,” the opinion states.

Shane Vogt, Palin's attorney, said in a statement: “Governor Palin is very pleased with today's decision, which represents a significant step forward in the process of holding publishers accountable for content that misleads readers and the public at large. The truth deserves a level playing field, and Governor Palin looks forward to presenting her case to a jury 'armed with the necessary evidence and properly instructed on the law,' as stated in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals' opinion.”

Former Alaska Governor Palin sued the Times and its former opinion editor James Bennet over a June 14, 2017, editorial. The article, titled “America's Lethal Politics,” linked the 2011 shooting of former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords to a digital graphic of crosshairs over Democratic congressional districts published by Palin's political action committee in March 2010. No connection between the crosshair map and the shooting has ever been established. Rather, the attack was widely believed at the time of the editorial to be the result of the shooter's mental illness.

Palin's original defamation suit was dismissed, but in 2019 the Second Circuit overturned the dismissal. The case went to trial in 2022. Judge Jed Rakoff granted the Times' motion for a directed verdict days before the jury found the newspaper not liable for defaming Palin.

SEE ALSO: “Incident” involving staff reported during Trump visit to Arlington National Cemetery

In its opinion Wednesday, the appeals court agreed with Palin's view that Rakoff “wrongly disregarded or discredited her evidence of actual malice and improperly substituted his own verdict for that of the jury.”

The New York Times said in a statement to ABC News on Wednesday: “This decision is disappointing. We are confident that we will succeed in a retrial.”

Rakoff said at the time that he would overturn the ruling and dismiss the lawsuit because Palin had failed to meet the high standard of proving that the Times acted with “actual malice” when it published an editorial falsely linking Palin's political action committee to a mass shooting.

Palin sued the Times in 2017, about nine years after she was nominated by Senator John McCain as his vice presidential candidate, claiming the newspaper intentionally ruined her fledgling career as a political commentator and consultant by publishing an erroneous editorial that she said defamed her.

The editorial that prompted the lawsuit was published the same day that a gunman in a Washington, D.C. suburb opened fire on Republican politicians practicing for a congressional charity baseball game, wounding six people, including Republican Representative Steve Scalise.

The Times editorial board wrote that before the 2011 Arizona massacre, in which six people died and Giffords suffered a traumatic brain injury, Palin's political action committee fueled a violent atmosphere by circulating a map that stylized the districts of Giffords and 19 other Democrats.

Two days later, the Times published a correction saying the editorial had “mischaracterized” the map and “falsely claimed there was a connection between political rhetoric and the 2011 shooting.”

During the trial, Palin's testimony accused the Times of intentionally falsifying information to tarnish her reputation.

Bennet testified that while he was responsible for the incorrect information in the editorial, it was an honest mistake and he intended no harm.