Richelle D. Wallace v. City of Hampton, Virginia, et al

New York Times v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964) federalized a large swath of libel law 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 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