WASHINGTON (CN) — The Supreme Court on Monday declined to review a challenge by Trump megadonor and casino mogul Steve Wynn that aimed to overturn a core ruling on press freedom.
Wynn, a billionaire who oversaw the construction and operation of iconic Las Vegas casinos including The Mirage, Treasure Island and the Bellagio, petitioned the high court in an effort to lower the standard needed for public figures to sue over media reports.
The 1964 case New York Times v. Sullivan has allowed the media to report on public figures without the threat of costly libel suits. A bedrock of modern libel law and one of the Supreme Court’s most significant First Amendment rulings, the landmark decision says public officials must show actual malice to prevail in a libel suit.
The high court declined to grant certiorari in the case, marking a setback for a push among conservative legal scholars and media critics to overturn Sullivan.
Wynn sued the Associated Press in 2018 over the publication of a story about a sexual assault complaint filed against him in the 1970s. During its reporting, the AP obtained police records from two women who accused Wynn of sexual assault.
One of the women, Halina Kuta, told police that Wynn raped her in Chicago during the 1970s and that she gave birth to their daughter in a gas station bathroom. Wynn claims the AP omitted details of Kuta’s complaint that would have cast doubt on her claims. In his lawsuit, he says the article was published without fact-checking or investigating Kuta’s statements.
A trial court judge ruled that Kuta had indeed defamed Wynn — but Wynn couldn’t convince the courts that the AP unlawfully published her claims. Hence his appeal, which he says presents an ideal vehicle for the justices to overturn Sullivan.
“Sullivan is not equipped to handle the world as it is today,” Wynn wrote in his petition filed before the court. “Media is no longer controlled by companies that employ legions of factcheckers before publishing an article.”
In 2018, media reports detailed dozens of claims of sexual misconduct against him.
The Wall Street Journal reported that salon and spa employees accused him of sexual harassment, coercion and indecent exposure. He also reportedly paid $7.5 million to settle a sexual assault case. These accusations led him to resign as CEO of Wynn Resorts and resulted in tens of millions of dollars in fines for the company.
“Sullivan encourages individuals to libel first and question never, promising them near-absolute immunity should they do so,” he wrote.
The AP waived its right to file a response in the case.
Several justices, including Justice Clarence Thomas, a George H.W. Bush appointee, have explicitly called for challenges against the landmark ruling,
In a 2022 dissent, Thomas decried the ruling for allowing “media organizations and interest groups ‘to cast false aspersions on public figures with near impunity.’”
Justice Neil Gorsuch, a Donald Trump appointee, has likewise said that the actual malice doctrine “evolved into a subsidy for published falsehoods on a scale no one could have foreseen.”
Conservatives associated with the controversial Project 2025 — which Trump disavowed on the campaign trail but whose efforts to reshape the federal government often seem to mirror — have also called for Sullivan’s end.
“President Trump should make the case for revisiting the Sullivan ruling a more prominent and recurring part of his public rhetoric,” Carson Holloway, a Washington fellow in the Claremont Institute’s Center for the American Way of Life, wrote in a list of suggestions.
Trump has long railed against the media for its coverage of him, repeatedly calling outlets and reporters he did not like “fake news” and the “enemy of the people” during his first term in office.
He has heightened that rhetoric during the early months of his second term, going so far as to bar AP reporters from White House events in an effort to force the outlet to use “Gulf of America” when referring to the body of water instead of “Gulf of Mexico.”
U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden, a Trump appointee, denied the AP’s request for a temporary restraining order to lift the ban, a move that emboldened the White House to announce it would determine which news outlets will have access to the president as part of the pool allowed to cover certain events.
“History is written by the people who observe it,” Brian Hudak, chief of the Civil Division at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Washington D.C. said, defining the ban in February. “The president can choose who will carry his message in the manner he wishes.”