NEW YORK (AP) — A judge said Monday he will dismiss a libel lawsuit that former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin filed against The New York Times, claiming the newspaper damaged her reputation with a 2017 editorial falsely linking her campaign rhetoric to a mass shooting.
U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff made the ruling with the jury still deliberating in the New York City trial where the former Alaska governor and vice-presidential candidate testified last week.
The judge said Palin had failed to show that The Times had acted out of malice, something required in libel lawsuits involving public figures.
U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff says he will let jury deliberations continue in case his decision winds up being reversed on appeal.
Lawyers for both Palin and The Times declined to immediately comment on the judge’s decision.
Palin sued The Times in 2017, claiming the newspaper editorial had damaged her career as a political commentator and consultant. The newspaper published the editorial about gun control after U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise, a Louisiana Republican, was wounded when a man with a history of anti-GOP activity opened fire on a Congressional baseball team practice in Washington.
In the editorial, The Times wrote that before the 2011 mass shooting in Arizona that severely wounded former U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords and killed six others, Palin’s political action committee had contributed to an atmosphere of violence in the country by circulating a map of electoral districts that put Giffords and 19 other Democrats under stylized crosshairs.
The Times acknowledged that the editorial wrongly described both the map, and any link to the shooting, but said the mistake was not intentional.
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