Shkelzën Berisha v. Guy Lawson, et al.

New York Times v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964) federalized a large swath of libel law by holding that the First Amendment mandates proof of actual malice in any defamation action brought by a public official. In Curtis Publishing Co. v. Butts, 388 U.S. 130 (1967), the Court imposed that same requirement on public figure defamation plaintiffs. The correctness of extending the “actual malice” standard to public figure defamation plaintiffs has been repeatedly questioned by members of this Court, culminating in Justice Thomas’ call two Terms ago for the Court to “reconsider the precedents that require courts to” apply it. McKee v. Cosby, Jr., 139 S. Ct. 675, 676 (2019) (Thomas, J., concurring in denial of certiorari); see also Kagan, A Libel Story: Sullivan Then and Now (reviewing Anthony Lewis, Make No Law: The Sullivan Case and the First Amendment (1991)), 18 Law and Social Inquiry 197, 211 (1993) (“The use of the actual malice standard in this wide range of cases appears to have little connection with the story of Sullivan. Viewed from that vantage point, current libel law seems the result not of steady and sensible common law reasoning but of a striking disregard of the doctrine’s underpinnings.”). The question presented is whether this Court should overrule the “actual malice” requirement it imposed on public figure defamation plaintiffs.