The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled Wednesday that a district court had improperly dismissed former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s defamation lawsuit against the New York Times, allowing a new trial of the case.
As Breitbart News reported in February 2022, U.S. Judge Jed S. Rakoff, a Bill Clinton appointee to the federal bench in the Southern District of New York, dismissed the case even as jurors were still deliberating over the verdict.
Palin sued the Times over a 2017 editorial in which it said that she had inspired the 2011 mass shooting in Tucson, Arizona. Judge Rakoff initially dismissed the case, but it was revived by a federal appeals court. After the presentation of arguments in initial motions, Rakoff decided that Palin had enough evidence to allow the case to go to trial — a rarity in defamation suits by public figures against the media,…
