Donald J. Trump v. Cable News Network, Inc.

In Milkovich v. Lorain Journal Co., 497 U.S. 1 (1990), this Court held that a false statement framed as an opinion remains actionable as defamation if a reasonable reader could understand the statement to convey provably false facts. The Eleventh Circuit departed from that rule—and from the First, Second, Seventh, and Ninth Circuits—by treating false factual accusations as protected when conveyed through a pejorative label and inflammatory imagery. Here, CNN made false factual accusations about President Donald J. Trump’s challenges to the 2020 election process, and embedded them in pernicious comparisons to Hitler’s and Goebbels’s use of the “Big Lie” in antisemitic Nazi propaganda. The question presented is: Whether the First Amendment protects a publisher from defamation liability when it conveys provably false factual accusations through a pejorative label and accompanying inflammatory imagery.