Supreme Court Rejects Alan Dershowitz’s $300 Million Defamation Case Against CNN

On Monday, June 29, 2026, the Supreme Court of the United States declined to hear a $300 million defamation lawsuit brought by retired Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz against CNN. The decision leaves lower-court rulings in CNN's favor intact and preserves the landmark legal protections established in the 1964 Supreme Court precedent, New York Times Co. v. Sullivan.\n\n### Background of the Defamation Suit\nDershowitz filed the $300 million suit in 2020 following CNN’s coverage of his defense of then-President Donald Trump during his first Senate impeachment trial. The core of the dispute centered on an edited clip broadcast by CNN of Dershowitz responding to a question from Senator Ted Cruz regarding quid pro quo allegations involving Ukraine. Dershowitz argued that the network's selective editing falsely suggested he believed a president could commit illegal acts to secure re-election as long as they believed their election was in the public interest—a position Dershowitz described as "preposterous and foolish on its face".\n\nCNN maintained that it played his comments in full elsewhere and invited him on air twice to clarify his statements. Both a federal district court in Florida and the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ultimately dismissed Dershowitz's lawsuit, ruling that he had failed to prove CNN acted with "actual malice".\n\n### The Landmark Libel Standard Preserved\nBy denying certiorari, the Supreme Court avoided a potential reassessment of the Sullivan standard. Under this decades-old precedent, public figures must demonstrate "actual malice"—meaning that a media outlet published false statements with knowledge of their falsity or with reckless disregard for the truth—in order to win a defamation suit.\n\n### Dissenting Opinions\nDespite the court's brief, unexplained order, conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch dissented, expressing their continued willingness to reconsider the constitutional foundations of the Sullivan ruling. In his dissenting opinion, which Gorsuch joined, Thomas wrote that the actual malice standard "bears no relation to the text, history, or structure of the Constitution" and is excessively exacting for plaintiffs.\n\nThe outcome is widely viewed by legal analysts and press freedom advocates as a significant reinforcement of existing constitutional protections for journalists and media institutions reporting on public figures.