Supreme Court declines Steve Wynn’s bid to loosen libel standard

The Supreme Court on Monday turned away casino mogul Steve Wynn’s bid for the court to consider overturning its 61-year-old precedent that has protected journalists from libel lawsuits.

Wynn urged the justices to use his lawsuit against The Associated Press to revisit the 1964 landmark decision, New York Times v. Sullivan, which requires a showing of “actual malice” for public figures to hold newspapers and journalists liable for defamation, a high legal bar.

President Trump has long called for reducing libel protections for the press, and conservative Justice Clarence Thomas has said multiple times the precedent should be overruled.

“New York Times and its progeny have allowed media organizations and interest groups ‘to cast false aspersions on public figures with near impunity,’” Thomas wrote in dissent when the court declined to take up a similar case in 2022.

Thomas did not publicly dissent Monday when the high court declined to take up Wynn’s appeal in a brief order.

Wynn, the former Wynn Resorts CEO and finance chair of the Republican National Committee (RNC), told the justices that the precedent is “unfit for the modern era.”

“Instead, everyone in the world has the ability to publish any statement with a few keystrokes. And in this age of clickbait journalism, even those members of the legacy media have resorted to libelous headlines and false reports to generate views. This Court need not further this golden era of lies,” Wynn’s attorney wrote in his petition.

The AP waived its right to respond to the court filing.

Wynn brought the question to the Supreme Court after Nevada’s top court rejected Wynn’s 2018 lawsuit against the AP, which concerned a story the wire service published about two women’s police reports detailing allegations of sexual misconduct against the casino mogul from the 1970s. Wynn has denied the allegations.

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Supreme Court declines Steve Wynn’s bid to loosen libel standard

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