Supreme Court Denies Casino Magnate’s Challenge to Rework Defamation Protections

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday denied casino mogul Steve Wynn’s challenge to remove defamation protections established by New York Times v. Sullivan case.

The court decided it would not hear any argument from Wynn, the former CEO of Wynn Resorts, in his bid to remove defensive barriers for companies being sued for defamation. The court did not provide any comment on its decision.

Wynn sued the Associated Press in 2018 for what he claims were false allegations of sexual misconduct made against him stemming back to the 1970s.

Wynn’s gripes

The Nevada Supreme Court dismissed Wynn’s defamation lawsuit last year based on anti-SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation) laws. These essentially enable defendants to quickly respond to potentially damaging public statements or allegations with lawsuits, thereby acting as a quasi-barrier on the guarantee of free speech.

Wynn, a former finance chair of the Republican National Committee and top donor to President Donald Trump’s campaign, filed two separate complaints with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department that were later obtained by the AP. 

One of the complaints said that the sexual misconduct accusations were farcical and inaccurate. 

Nevada, being a state that adopted the federal court’s need to prove “actual malice”, needed Wynn to prove that the reporting was false and done with harmful intentions.

The top court at the Nevada state level failed to find any credence to Wynn’s claim of defamation and actual malice, leading to the case’s dismissal. 

Wynn later filed an appeal that implored the court to revisit the validity of the “actual malice” standard and questioned if the court’s ability to dismiss cases that don’t meet the actual malice standard violated the right to a fair jury trial established by the U.S. Constitution’s Seventh Amendment.

What is actual malice?

Trump has previously questioned the merit of the actual malice precedent, and conservative justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch indicated they would be open to exploiting a reversal of the New York Times v. Sullivan decision.

The case is regarded as the most important in the world of libel and defamation. It greatly expanded First Amendment protections, particularly for journalists whose job required them to publish critical, sometimes damming pieces on public figures.

Following the Sullivan decision, defendants who were public figures could not win their cases without proving actual malice.

The U.S. Supreme Court has had several opportunities to take a look at the case recently. In 2021, the son of a former Albanian prime minister said that several statements published in a book that was later interpreted into the film War Dogs were defamatory. 

The Court did not take the opportunity to hear the case, leading to dissenting opinions from Thomas and Gorsuch.

Trump in 2022 also filed a $475 million defamation lawsuit against CNN, in which he accused the company of likening his unfounded claims of election fraud in 2020 to Adolf Hitler.