# New York Times Co. v. Sullivan

New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964), was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision that ruled the freedom of speech protections in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution limit the ability of a public official to sue for defamation. The decision held that if a plaintiff in a defamation lawsuit is a public official or candidate for public office, then not only must they prove the normal elements of defamation—publication of a false defamatory statement to a third party—they must also prove that the statement was made with "actual malice", meaning the defendant either knew the statement was false or recklessly disregarded whether it might be false. New York Times Co. v. Sullivan is frequently ranked as one of the greatest Supreme Court decisions of the modern era.
The case began in 1960, when The New York Times published a full-page advertisement by supporters of Martin Luther King Jr. that criticized the police in Montgomery, Alabama, for their treatment of civil rights movement protesters. The ad had several factual errors regarding the number of times King had been arrested during the protests, what song the protesters had sung, and whether students had been expelled for participating. Based on the inaccuracies, Montgomery police commissioner L. B. Sullivan sued the Times for defamation in the local Alabama county court. After the judge ruled that the advertisement's inaccuracies were defamatory per se, the jury returned a verdict in favor of Sullivan and awarded him $500,000 in damages. The Times appealed first to the Supreme Court of Alabama, which affirmed the verdict, and then to the U.S. Supreme Court.
In March 1964, the Supreme Court unanimously held that the Alabama court's verdict violated the First Amendment. The Court reasoned that defending the principle of wide-open debate will inevitably include "vehement, caustic, and... unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials." The Supreme Court's decision, and its adoption of the actual malice standard for defamation cases by public officials, reduced the financial exposure from potential defamation claims and frustrated efforts by public officials to use these claims to suppress political criticism. The Supreme Court has since extended Sullivan's higher legal standard for defamation to all "public figures". This has made it extremely difficult for a public figure to win a defamation lawsuit in the United States.

## Background

On March 29, 1960, The New York Times carried a full-page advertisement titled "Heed Their Rising Voices", paid for by the Committee to Defend Martin Luther King and the Struggle for Freedom in the South. In the advertisement, the Committee solicited funds to defend Martin Luther King Jr., against an Alabama perjury indictment. The advertisement described actions against civil rights protesters, some of them inaccurately, some of which involved the police force of Montgomery, Alabama. Referring to Alabama "official authority and police power", the advertisement stated: "They have arrested [King] seven times. ... ", whereas he had been arrested four times; and that "truckloads of police ... ringed the Alabama State College Campus" after the demonstration at the State Capitol, whereas the police had been "deployed near" the campus but had not actually "ringed" it and had not gone there in connection with the State Capitol demonstration. Although the Montgomery Public Safety commissioner, L. B. Sullivan, was not named in the advertisement, Sullivan argued that the inaccurate criticism of actions by the police was defamatory to him as well because it was his duty to supervise the police department.
Because Alabama law denied public officers recovery of punitive damages in a libel action on their official conduct unless they first made a written demand for a public retraction and the defendant failed or refused to comply, Sullivan sent such a request. The Times did not publish a retraction in response to the demand. Instead, its lawyers wrote a letter stating, among other things, that "we ... are somewhat puzzled as to how you think the statements in any way reflect on you," and "you might, if you desire, let us know in what respect you claim that the statements in the advertisement reflect on you."
Sullivan did not respond but instead filed a libel suit a few days later. He also sued four African-American ministers mentioned in the ad: Ralph Abernathy, S.S. Seay Sr., Fred Shuttlesworth, and Joseph Lowery.
The Times subsequently published a retraction of the advertisement upon the demand of Governor John Patterson of Alabama, who alleged the publication charged him with "grave misconduct and ... improper actions and omissions as Governor of Alabama and ex officio chairman of the State Board of Education of Alabama." When asked to explain why there had been a retraction for the Governor but not for Sullivan, the Secretary of the Times testified:
   We did that because we didn't want anything that was published by the Times to be a reflection on the State of Alabama and the Governor was, as far as we could see, the embodiment of the State of Alabama and the proper representative of the state and we had by that time learned more of the facts which the ad purported to recite and, finally, the ad did refer to the action of the state authorities and the Board of Education presumably of which the Governor is the ex officio chairman ...
However, the Secretary also testified he did not think that "any of the languages in there referred to Mr. Sullivan."
The jury returned a verdict for Sullivan and awarded him $500,000 in damages ($5.26 million in 2024). The state supreme court affirmed on August 30, 1962, saying "The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution does not protect libelous publications". The Times appealed to the United States Supreme Court.
Constitutional law scholar Herbert Wechsler successfully argued the case before the United States Supreme Court. Louis M. Loeb, a partner at the firm of Lord Day & Lord who served as chief counsel to the Times from 1948 to 1967, was among the authors of the brief of the Times.

## Decision

On March 9, 1964, the Supreme Court issued a unanimous 9–0 decision in favor of the Times that vacated the Alabama court's judgment and limited newspapers' liability for damages in defamation suits by public officials.

### Opinion of the Court

Justice William J. Brennan Jr. authored the Court's opinion, and five other justices joined it. The Court began by explaining that the ability to criticize public government officials was at the core of the American rights to freedom of speech and freedom of the press protected by the First Amendment.
   The general proposition that freedom of expression upon public questions is secured by the First Amendment has long been settled by our decisions. The constitutional safeguard, we have said, "was fashioned to assure unfettered interchange of ideas for the bringing about of political and social changes desired by the people." ... "[I]t is a prized American privilege to speak one's mind, although not always with perfect taste, on all public institutions." ... The First Amendment, said Judge Learned Hand, "presupposes that right conclusions are more likely to be gathered out of a multitude of tongues, than through any kind of authoritative selection. To many, this is, and always will be, folly; but we have staked upon it our all."
The Court said that because of these core American free-speech principles, it would have to consider Sullivan's defamation claims "against the background of a profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, and that it may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials."
With this background, the Court framed the case around the question of whether this American constitutional commitment to free speech required loosening traditional defamation laws.
   The present advertisement, as an expression of grievance and protest on one of the major public issues of our time, would seem clearly to qualify for the constitutional protection. The question is whether it forfeits that protection by the falsity of some of its factual statements and by its alleged defamation of respondent.
In answer, the Court held that the free-speech protections of the First Amendment covered the Times advertisement despite its factual inaccuracies. The Court reasoned that "erroneous statement is inevitable in free debate, and ... must be protected if the freedoms of expression are to have the breathing space that they need ... to survive". It concluded that the importance of safeguarding the "breathing space" created by the First Amendment's protections required giving constitutional protection to "erroneous statements honestly made". The Court analogized Alabama's libel law to the infamous Alien and Sedition Acts passed in the 1790s during the presidency of John Adams. It reasoned that a broad interpretation of libel laws that protected government officials from criticism would produce situations similar to those under the Alien and Sedition Acts, which had been historically criticized.
Because of the importance of free debate about public officials, the Court held that it was not enough that Alabama's libel law—like most libel laws in the English common law tradition—allowed defendants to use the truth of their defamatory statements as a defense. Instead, the Court held that under U.S. law, any public official suing for defamation must prove that the defendant made the defamatory statement with "actual malice".
   The constitutional guarantees require, we think, a federal rule that prohibits a public official from recovering damages for a defamatory falsehood relating to his official conduct unless he proves that the statement was made with "actual malice" – that is, with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.
The Court said that besides proving "actual malice", the First Amendment's protections also imposed two other limitations on libel laws. First, a public official seeking damages must prove that the defendant's defamatory statement was about the official individually, not about government policy generally. Second, unlike in traditional common law defamation lawsuits where the defendant had the burden to prove that his or her statement was true, in defamation suits involving American public officials the officials must prove that the defendant's statement was false.

## International comparisons

The rule that somebody alleging defamation should have to prove untruth, rather than that the defendant should have to prove the truth of a statement, stood as a departure from the previous common law. In England, the development was specifically rejected in Derbyshire County Council v. Times Newspapers Ltd and it was also rejected in Canada in Hill v. Church of Scientology of Toronto and more recently in Grant v. Torstar Corp. In Australia, the outcome of the case was followed in Theophanous v. The Herald & Weekly Times Ltd, but Theophanous was itself overruled by the High Court of Australia in Lange v Australian Broadcasting Corporation (1997) 189 CLR 520.

## 50th anniversary

In 2014, on the 50th anniversary of the ruling, The New York Times released an editorial in which it stated the background of the case, laid out the rationale for the Supreme Court decision, critically reflected on the state of freedom of the press 50 years after the ruling and compared the state of freedom of the press in the United States with other nations. The editorial board of The New York Times heralded the Sullivan decision not only as a ruling which "instantly changed libel law in the United States", but also as "the clearest and most forceful defense of press freedom in American history." The board added:
   The ruling was revolutionary because the court for the first time rejected virtually any attempt to squelch criticism of public officials—even if false—as antithetical to "the central meaning of the First Amendment." Today, our understanding of freedom of the press comes in large part from the Sullivan case. Its core observations and principles remain unchallenged, even as the Internet has turned everyone into a worldwide publisher—capable of calling public officials instantly to account for their actions and also of ruining reputations with the click of a mouse.
In a 2015 Time magazine survey of over 50 law professors, both Owen Fiss (Yale) and Steven Shiffrin (Cornell) named New York Times v. Sullivan "the best Supreme Court decision since 1960", with Fiss noting that the decision helped cement "the free-speech traditions that have ensured the vibrancy of American democracy" and Schiffrin remarking that the case "overturned the censorial aspects of the law of libel and made it far easier in what’s left of our democracy for citizens—including the Fourth Estate—to criticize the powerful."

## Later developments

* Curtis Publishing Co. v. Butts, 388 U.S. 130 (1967) held that public figures who are not public officials may still sue news organizations if they disseminate information about them which is recklessly gathered and unchecked.
* Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., 418 U.S. 323 (1974): Actual malice not necessary for defamation of private person if negligence is present.
* Time, Inc. v. Hill, 385 U.S. 374 (1967). Extension of actual malice standard to false light invasion of privacy tort.
* Hustler Magazine v. Falwell, 485 U.S. 46 (1988): Extending standard to intentional infliction of emotional distress.
* Milkovich v. Lorain Journal Co., 497 U.S. 1 (1990): Existing law is sufficient to protect free speech without recognizing opinion privilege against libel claims.

## Further developments

The potential for reconsideration of the precedent of Sullivan were raised in the late 2010s and early 2020s. Leading into and during his first presidency from 2016 to 2020, Donald Trump called for changes in libel laws, taking issue with reporting from The New York Times and the content of Bob Woodward's book, Fear: Trump in the White House in 2018.
Trump's opinion was supported by Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas in various court opinions that followed. Thomas advocated reevaluating Sullivan in an opinion attached to the court's 2019 denial to hear a libel case brought by Katherine McKee, one of the women that accused Bill Cosby of sexual assault. McKee claimed Cosby had leaked a letter that permanently damaged her reputation. Lower courts rejected her case based on Sullivan, stating that she "thrust herself to the forefront of a public controversy", making her a limited public figure and requiring the higher standard of malice to be demonstrated. While Thomas wrote that the Court's decision to deny certification of McKee's appeal based on Sullivan was correct, he further said that Sullivan was made wrongly, and that "If the Constitution does not require public figures to satisfy an actual-malice standard in state-law defamation suits, then neither should we". Thomas also repeated calls to review Sullivan in his dissent in Berisha v. Lawson in 2021 and in his dissent to the court's denial to hear Don Blankenship's appeal, in the latter saying that Sullivan allows news agencies to "cast false aspersions on public figures with near impunity". Justice Neil Gorsuch also joined in Thomas in Berisha in expressing his concerns of how the media landscape had changed since Sullivan.
Federal judge Laurence Silberman called on the Supreme Court to overturn New York Times v. Sullivan in a March 2021 opinion, stating that the New York Times and The Washington Post are "virtually Democratic Party broadsheets". Silberman's dissent also accused big tech companies of censoring conservatives and warned that "Democratic Party ideological control" of mainstream media may be a prelude to an "authoritarian or dictatorial regime" that constitutes "a threat to a viable democracy".
Las Vegas casino owner Steve Wynn had filed defamation lawsuits against the Associated Press in 2018, claiming that articles published by the agency that contained allegations related to Wynn and sexual assault in the 1970s. Wynn argued that the Associated Press had used actual malice in their reporting. The Nevada courts dismissed Wynn's suit, arguing he had failed to show "actual malice" under the Sullivan decision. Wynn subsequently has petitioned the Supreme Court to hear his case in February 2025, asking them to overturn the "actual malice" standard of Sullivan.
On March 19, 2023, The New York Times published a story reviewing the original advertisement and the legal case.