Did you ever wonder why I can say all those mean things about Jerry Knowles and Doyle Heffley and Lou Barletta and not get sued. OK, first of all, in a libel suit, truth is always a defense, so when I say that Knowles is the dumbest representative in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, he would have to prove otherwise. (He can’t.)
More importantly, I have New York Times v. Sullivan (1964) on my side. Today the Times ran an obituary for an attorney on the losing side in that case. Prior to Sullivan, Southern states had libel laws that allowed public officials to sue newspapers that reported on their activities. Sullivan was the Montgomery, Alabama, Public Safety Commissioner who said he was defamed in an advertisement that ran in the Times.
Sullivan won in Alabama courts, but the case was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court ruled 9-0 (this was decades before Scalia, Roberts, and Thomas) that “the First Amendment protects the publication of all statements, even false ones, about the conduct of public officials except when statements are made with actual malice (with knowledge that they are false or in reckless disregard of their truth or falsity).”
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