Supreme Court won’t help Roy Moore preserve $8.2M defamation award

WASHINGTON (CN) — The Supreme Court refused to block the release of an $8.2 million jury verdict favoring Republican politician Roy Moore on Monday, discharging a bond securing the funds while the 2017 U.S. Senate candidate fights to preserve his defamation case against a Democratic super PAC.

In a short, unexplained order, Justice Clarence Thomas, a George H.W. Bush appointee, denied Moore’s emergency application, letting an appeals court ruling unanimously overturning the verdict earlier this year take effect. Thomas presides over emergency appeals for the 11th Circuit.

According to Moore, without the high court’s help, the PAC will be free to release the supersedeas bond, leaving him unable to collect any damages if the judgment in his favor is restored.

Moore was removed from his position on the Alabama Supreme Court twice — first in 2003 after ignoring a court order to remove a prominent display of the Ten Commandments from the state judicial building, and again in 2016 after refusing to follow the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark ruling recognizing the right to same-sex marriage.

The following year, Moore launched a Senate campaign to fill the seat vacated when Jeff Sessions resigned to serve as attorney general during the first Trump administration.

According to Moore, the Senate Majority PAC, a group supporting Democratic candidates, ran an advertisement during his ultimately unsuccessful campaign implying he solicited sex from a 14-year-old girl.

The ad, which aired on Alabama television stations 533 times over 10 days, showcased a series of quotes about claims of sexual misconduct against Moore and included statements such as, “Moore was actually banned from the Gadsden Mall … for soliciting sex from young girls” and “One he approached was 14 and working as Santa’s helper.”

Moore sued over defamation and false light invasion of privacy, arguing the combination of the statements falsely created a new statement that he solicited sex from the young girl.

A jury ruled the PAC acted with “actual malice” — the defamation standard established by the Supreme Court’s landmark 1964 ruling in New York Times v. Sullivan — and awarded Moore $8.2 million.

But the 11th Circuit reversed in April, finding the PAC made “a negligent error at best” with its “poor choice of words” in the ad. The Atlanta-based appeals court sided with other circuit courts in finding that a claim of defamation by implication requires Moore to show that the PAC intended the ad’s defamatory implied meaning or acted with “reckless disregard to the defamatory implied meaning.”

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