Supreme Court Orders CNN To Respond to the ACLJ

Today we have a MAJOR DEVELOPMENT in our landmark case against CNN  at the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court just ordered the cable news giant to respond to our cert petition, which we filed to hold CNN (and the mainstream media) accountable for reporting lies during President Donald Trump’s Senate impeachment trial.

Remember when we told you that we had filed a petition for writ of certiorari to the Supreme Court in a critical defamation lawsuit against CNN for spreading a blatantly false narrative? CNN hoped that if they ignored us, the case would go away. Fortunately, the Supreme Court had other plans.

The Supreme Court is taking the case more seriously than it appears CNN did, and has ordered the cable giant to respond to our petition in our case challenging New York Times Co. v. Sullivan.

Now I realize that may just sound procedural. But it’s a big deal, because when you file a petition asking the Supreme Court to take your case, the other side doesn’t have to respond. In fact, it’s a common strategy if the other side thinks the Court isn’t that interested in the case. They’ll simply just waive their response, in the hope that the Justices will quietly deny the case at conference.

CNN basically said, We’re not even going to bother with a response. Their strategy seemed to be: Don’t engage, or draw attention to it, and it will probably just die on the vine. However, it didn’t. The Supreme Court stepped in and said, No, you’re not brushing this off – you’re filing a written response.

To be clear, that doesn’t automatically mean the Court is taking the case. But it does mean that at least some of the Justices think this issue deserves a closer look.

My dad, ACLJ Chief Counsel Jay Sekulow, joined the broadcast to break down the case, as well as offer insight into what happens next:

We filed our cert petition, that is a formal request, probably 80 pages of briefing, asking the Supreme Court to hear the case. . . . We just got word late yesterday, and this is a huge development on a very strategic and important case, that the Supreme Court of the United States has ordered CNN to file a response in writing by mid-to-late March.

So, they’ve got to file in about 4 weeks. The importance of this is that we will have the opportunity to respond again to CNN for the lies that they told about Professor [Alan] Dershowitz, . . . who’s a Democrat [and] was one of our defense attorneys at the impeachment trial, the first one, of Donald Trump. He was one of my co-counsels. We brought him into the case. He handled specific constitutional issues, very specific, saying that there were no grounds to impeach the sitting President of the United States.

During that proceeding, he got a lot of flak from the Left on that, as you can imagine. But what happened was CNN went on air as soon as he was done with his first presentation and misstated his main thesis in the case. In fact, they said he said the opposite. So, under New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, when you’re dealing with a public figure, they basically had . . . blanket immunity. They could say whatever they want. . . .

We were set for a conference to vote on certiorari on Thursday – tomorrow. They were to vote tomorrow on the case, whether they were going to hear it or not. But what happened here was CNN was hoping that there would be no order. It would go to conference and be denied.

But instead, a number of Justices of the Supreme Court said, No, we want to hear what CNN has to say, and then we’ll decide if we take it. So, it’s gonna delay it until probably April, maybe even May. We’ll file another round of briefs in this, but this is a really significant case for accountability in the media, and [it is] long overdue.

This case is about a legal standard that’s been around since 1964, a case that Professor Dershowitz had a direct connection to from his days as a law clerk for Justice Goldberg. Remember, this was back when there were only three major TV networks, local newspapers, and the world was still about 30 years away from internet access.

Under the 62-year-old language of New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, if you’re considered a “public figure,” you can’t just prove that a media outlet got something wrong about you. You have to prove it was done intentionally, with “actual malice.” That means proving they knew it was false or recklessly disregarded the truth.

The world has changed. The media has changed. Back then, if something was misreported, you had limited resources to be able to go back and check the original tape. It made proving defamation much more difficult. Today you can pull up full speeches online instantly. Tools for verification are vastly better. That should also mean networks have almost no excuse to get it wrong. Unless they’re doing it on purpose.

The fact that the Supreme Court ordered CNN to respond tells us two things: CNN didn’t want anyone looking too closely, and the Supreme Court isn’t letting them slide.

Today’s Sekulow broadcast included more analysis of the Supreme Court’s decision to make CNN answer our filing, including more from my dad, ACLJ Chief Counsel Jay Sekulow. We were also joined by ACLJ Senior Counsel CeCe Heil to tell you about a new initiative we’re engaging in – the Nehemiah Alliance – and how you can be involved.

Watch the full broadcast below: