Adam Liptak for the NYT:

Starting in 2019, Justice Clarence Thomas has repeatedly called for the Supreme Court to reconsider New York Times v. Sullivan, the landmark First Amendment decision that made it hard for public officials to prevail in libel suits.

That project gained momentum in 2021, when Justice Neil M. Gorsuch said the decision “has evolved into an ironclad subsidy for the publication of falsehoods by means and on a scale previously unimaginable.”

So it was notable that just five days before President Trump took office last month, the Supreme Court seemed to go out of its way to signal that it is not ready to embrace one of his most dearly held goals: to “open up our libel laws” and overrule the Sullivan decision.

The signal, faint but unmistakable, came in a routine case on whether sales representatives were entitled to overtime. Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh cited the Sullivan decision with seeming approval, noting that it had held that the Constitution insists that public officials suing for libel must prove their cases with clear and convincing evidence….

The positive reference to the Sullivan decision last month was not a fluke. In 2023, Justice Elena Kagan, writing for five justices in a 7-to-2 decision, relied on Sullivan to rule that the First Amendment imposes limits on laws that make it a crime to issue threats on the internet….

All of this suggests that there remain only two votes to overturn the Sullivan decision, well short of the four it takes to add a case to the court’s docket, much less the five required to prevail on the merits.

Still, the attacks from Justices Thomas and Gorsuch have not gone unnoticed. Their dissents have been cited in 25 court decisions, according to a database search….