The Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to consider overturning a landmark case that gives protections to news organizations facing defamation claims by rejecting an appeal brought by West Virginia coal baron Don Blankenship.
Blankenship, also an erstwhile Republican Senate candidate, sued various news organizations for referring to him as a convicted felon when in fact he was convicted of a misdemeanor in relation to a mining disaster in 2010 that killed 29 miners.
He claimed that his loss in the 2018 Republican Senate primary in West Virginia was attributable to the erroneous comments repeated in the media, which he suggested were deliberate.
Among the defendants is MSNBC, a division of NBCUniversal, which also owns NBC News. CNN, Fox News and the Washington Post are among other news organizations that were sued.
Blankenship asked the court to overturn the 1964 Supreme Court defamation ruling in New York Times v. Sullivan, which concluded that there must be evidence of “actual malice” for a public figure to pursue a defamation claim.