*

Casino mogul Steve Wynn sued AP news wire for defamation

*

Trump, Justices Thomas and Gorsuch question 1964 precedent

By John Kruzel

WASHINGTON, March 24 (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court

turned away on Monday a bid by casino mogul Steve Wynn to roll

back defamation protections established in its landmark 1964

ruling in the case New York Times v. Sullivan - a standard that

has been questioned by President Donald Trump and two of its own

conservative justices.

The justices declined to hear an appeal by Wynn, former CEO

of Wynn Resorts ( WYNN ), of a decision by Nevada's top court to

dismiss his defamation suit against the Associated Press and one

of its journalists under a state law meant to safeguard the U.S.

Constitution's First Amendment protections for freedom of

speech.

The Supreme Court in its New York Times v. Sullivan ruling

and subsequent decisions set a standard that in order to win a

libel suit, a public figure must demonstrate the offending

statement was made with "actual malice," meaning with knowledge

that it was false or with reckless disregard as to whether it

was false.

That standard has since been adopted in a number of state

laws across the country, including in Nevada.

Wynn, the former finance chair of the Republican National

Committee, filed a defamation lawsuit in 2018 accusing the AP

news wire and the journalist of publishing an article falsely

alleging he committed sexual assault in the 1970s.

Those claims first appeared in two separate complaints filed

with police that an AP reporter obtained from the Las Vegas

Metropolitan Police Department. One of the complaints, Wynn

argued, was implausible on its face. A Nevada court in a

separate proceeding found that complaint to have included

"clearly fanciful or delusional" allegations.

Wynn has denied the sexual assault allegations.

Nevada's top court found that Wynn failed to show that a

disputed 2018 AP report containing allegations of sexual assault

had been published with "actual malice."

Wynn in his appeal asked the justices to assess "whether

this court should overturn Sullivan's actual-malice standard,"

as well as a related prior court decision. Wynn also asked the

court to assess whether state laws like Nevada's that impose the

standard of "actual malice" at a preliminary stage of legal

proceedings violate the U.S. Constitution's Seventh Amendment

right to a jury trial.

The Supreme Court in recent years has turned away

opportunities to revisit New York Times v. Sullivan, including a

2021 denial that drew dissents from Thomas and Gorsuch, who are

members of the top U.S. judicial body's 6-3 conservative

majority.

Citing a rapidly changing media environment increasingly

rife with disinformation, Thomas and Gorsuch wrote separately

that the court should take a fresh look at its precedents that

make it harder for public figures to win defamation cases.

Since launching his first Republican presidential campaign

in 2015, Trump has often attacked and even sued media outlets

whose coverage he dislikes, and has criticized American

defamation laws as too protective of the news media.

Trump for years has been fiercely critical of the news

media, sometimes calling reports he does not like "fake news"

and referring to the press as "the enemy of the American

people." Since beginning his second term as president in

January, he has limited the access of some news outlets in

coverage of the White House and other parts of the U.S.

government such as the Pentagon.

A federal judge in 2023 threw out Trump's $475 million

defamation lawsuit against CNN in which he had claimed the news

network's description of his false claims of 2020 election fraud

as the "big lie" associated him with Adolf Hitler. Trump's

lawyers, in a 2022 filing in that case, had invited the judge to

reconsider the legal standard set in New York Times v. Sullivan.

"The court should reconsider whether Sullivan's standard

truly protects the democratic values embodied by the First

Amendment, or, instead, facilitates the pollution of the 'stream

of information about public officials and public affairs' with

false information," Trump's lawyers wrote.