New York, NY – April 14, 2025
The retrial of Sarah Palin’s high-stakes libel lawsuit against The New York Times kicked off Monday in Manhattan’s federal court, giving the former Alaska governor and 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate a fresh shot to prove the newspaper defamed her in a 2017 editorial. The case, centered on a now-corrected piece that falsely linked Palin’s campaign rhetoric to a 2011 mass shooting, has drawn intense scrutiny as a test of press protections amid a politically charged climate. Jury selection began this morning, setting the stage for a weeklong clash that pits a conservative icon against a media giant.
Palin’s suit stems from a June 14, 2017, editorial titled “America’s Lethal Politics,” published after a shooting at a congressional baseball practice. The piece, penned under then-editorial page editor James Bennet, wrongly suggested a “clear” link between a Palin political action committee map—marking Democratic districts, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’, with crosshairs—and the 2011 Arizona shooting that killed six and wounded Giffords. Palin claims the piece wrecked her reputation and career, alleging the Times acted with “actual malice,” the legal threshold for public figures to win defamation cases. The Times admits the error but insists it was an honest mistake, corrected within hours.
The first trial in February 2022 ended in defeat for Palin. U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff dismissed the case mid-deliberations, ruling she hadn’t proven malice, and let jurors—who later ruled against her—finish their work. But last August, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals revived the suit, citing Rakoff’s errors: excluding evidence, like Bennet’s ties to his senator brother, Michael Bennet; giving flawed jury instructions; and risking bias when jurors saw news alerts about his ruling. “The jury is sacrosanct,” the appeals court wrote, ordering a retrial to ensure fairness.
Opening arguments today saw Palin’s lawyer, Kenneth Turkel, frame the case as a fight for truth against media overreach. “They knew it was false, or didn’t care,” he said of the Times, pointing to Bennet’s testimony that he’d read prior reports debunking the shooting’s link to Palin. The Times’ attorney, David Axelrod, countered that the error was a rushed oversight, not a vendetta, and stressed the paper’s swift correction. “This wasn’t about Sarah Palin—it was about gun laws,” Axelrod told jurors, per Reuters.
The trial unfolds as media face mounting legal pressure. President Trump’s recent lawsuits—against CBS for $20 billion over a “60 Minutes” edit and the Des Moines Register for a faulty poll—echo Palin’s battle, fueling X posts like, “Palin’s taking on Goliath again—go get ‘em!” Yet, others argue she’s exploiting a mistake: “NYT messed up, but malice? That’s a stretch.” With Palin slated to testify again, the case could ripple beyond Manhattan, testing how far First Amendment protections stretch when errors hit hard.