The Supreme Court declined on Dec. 5 to hear the appeal of the controversial and formerly high-profile journalist Chuck Johnson, who sued the Huffington Post website over characterizing him as a white nationalist in a 2019 article.
Some online businesses had watched the case carefully, fearing that if the Supreme Court had agreed to take the case and ultimately ruled against the Huffington Post on the merits, suing online publishers and media outlets for libel or other civil wrongs could have been made easier.
On the presidential campaign trail in February 2016, then-candidate Donald Trump promised to ease libel lawsuit prerequisites so when media outlets publish “purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money. We’re going to open up those libel laws.”…