By Jonathan Stempel
NEW YORK (Reuters) -Sarah Palin on Wednesday won her bid for a new trial against the New York Times over an editorial that the former Alaska governor said was defamatory.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Palin can try again to prove that the Times should be liable for a 2017 editorial that incorrectly linked her to a mass shooting six years earlier that killed six people and seriously wounded Democratic U.S. congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.
Media critics, and Palin herself, have viewed the case as a possible vehicle to overturn New York Times v. Sullivan, the landmark 1964 U.S. Supreme Court decision that set a high bar for public figures to prove defamation.
Writing for a three-judge panel, Circuit Judge John Walker said U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff in Manhattan made several errors that tainted Palin’s trial in February 2022 against the Times and former editorial page editor James Bennet.
The appeals court said Rakoff wrongly excluded evidence that Palin believed reflected the Times’ “actual malice” in publishing the editorial, and wrongly instructed jurors on how much proof was needed for the Times to be liable.