On February 14, 2022, U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff dismissed former Alaskan governor Sarah Palin's defamation lawsuit against the New York Times. Palin and her legal team argue that a 2017 opinion editorial published in the Times accused her of inciting the 2011 mass shooting in Tucson, Arizona where, infamously, former representative Gabby Giffords was wounded. [1] James Bennet, the New York Times editorial page editor at the time of the Op Ed’s publication, described in the piece what he called a clear link between the shooting and Palin’s campaign ads, which depicted Giffords and other members of the Democratic Party under illustrations of a gun’s crosshairs. Palin's suit was dismissed, however, on the grounds that her legal team had not proved actual malice. Palin has since expressed the desire to take her case to the Supreme Court, an escalation that will surely invite a reconsideration of the actual malice standard and its precedent. In the wake of this renewed debate, however, it is crucial to remember the actual malice standard’s integral role as a function of free press protections. As such, the standard should be preserved in close to its original form.

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