WASHINGTON − The Supreme Court docket on Monday declined to listen to the case of a former Kentucky high school student and supporter of Donald Trump who mentioned he’d been the sufferer of “cancel tradition” after a video of his interplay with an aged Native American man went viral in 2019.
That call leaves in place a decrease courtroom’s dismissal of filed by Nicholas Sandmann in opposition to Gannett, the mother or father firm of USA TODAY, and different media organizations for his or her protection of the incident.
Sandmann argued he was defamed by their studies on his confrontation with Native American rights activist Nathan Phillips on the Lincoln Memorial in January 2019.
Indigenous Individuals’s March and March for Life, standing nose-to-nose
A video of Sandmann, then 16 and a pupil at Covington Catholic in Northern Kentucky, standing nostril to nostril with Phillips went viral and unleashed a firestorm of web criticism that the scholar’s conduct was racially motivated, which Sandmann denied. Phillips was attending an “Indigenous Individuals’s March” whereas Sandmann was strolling in a “March for Life” occasion.
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Sandmann filed lawsuits in opposition to eight media organizations, together with the New York Occasions, ABC Information, CBS Information and Rolling Stone journal, searching for a mixed $1.25 billion for his or her protection of the occasion.
A federal choose in Kentucky dismissed the suit in 2022, ruling that Phillips’ assertion that Sandmann “blocked him and wouldn’t permit him to retreat” – as reported by the media – was Phillips’ opinion for which they may not be sued.
The Cincinnati-based sixth U.S. Circuit Court docket of Appeals upheld the judge’s dismissal.
In Sandmann’s unsuccessful petition to the Supreme Court docket, his lawyer mentioned the case has “come to epitomize the high-water mark of the `cancel tradition.'”
Sandmann, his lawyer mentioned, was remodeled “from a quiet, nameless teenager right into a nationwide social pariah, one whose embarrassed smile in response to Phillips’ aggression turned a goal for anger and hatred.”
That occurred due to the media’s “careless failure” to analyze Phillips’ description of the encounter, his lawyer instructed the courtroom.
A teen with a ‘Make America Nice Once more’ hat turns into a conservative trigger celebre
The go well with turned a trigger celebre for conservatives and discuss present hosts.
Then-President Trump defended Sandmann and his fellow pupil on Twitter, claiming that they’d been “smeared” with false studies by the media.
In a speech at the 2020 Republican National Convention, Sandmann accused the media of making an attempt to “cancel” him as a result of he backed Trump.
Within the 2019 video that went viral, Sandmann was proven carrying one among Trump’s “Make America Nice Once more” marketing campaign hats whereas smiling at Phillips, who was beating a drum and chanting.
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Some social media on the time claimed the incident was racially charged on the a part of the white teenager, which Sandmann and different witnesses disputed. Sandmann sued, saying the information protection had unfairly defamed him.
However the go well with was narrowed by the choose to focus solely on whether or not the quote attributed to Phillips was defamatory.
“The media defendants have been overlaying a matter of nice public curiosity, and so they reported Phillips’s first-person view of what he skilled,” U.S. Senior Decide William Bertelsman wrote when dismissing the go well with in 2022.
When Sandmann appealed to the Supreme Court docket, the media shops waived their proper to reply.
The Washington Post, NBC and CNN had beforehand settled with Sandmann.
This text initially appeared on USA TODAY: Supreme Court won’t hear Nicholas Sandmann ‘cancel culture’ case
