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By John Kruzel
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court turned away on Monday a bid by casino mogul Steve Wynn to roll back defamation protections established in its landmark 1964 ruling in the case New York Times v. Sullivan - a standard that has been questioned by President Donald Trump and two of its own conservative justices.
The justices declined to hear an appeal by Wynn, former CEO of Wynn Resorts, of a decision by Nevada's top court to dismiss his defamation suit against the Associated Press and one of its journalists under a state law meant to safeguard the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment protections for freedom of speech.
The Supreme Court in its New York Times v. Sullivan ruling and subsequent decisions set a standard that in order to win a libel suit, a public figure must demonstrate the offending statement was made with "actual malice," meaning with knowledge it was false or with reckless disregard as to whether it was false. That standard has since been adopted in a number of state laws across the country, including in Nevada.
Lawyers for Wynn expressed regret that the justices declined to take up the appeal.
"The fact that media outlets are free to publish demonstrably false stories turns the First Amendment on its head," his lawyers said in a statement.
Wynn, the former finance chair of the Republican National Committee, filed a defamation lawsuit in 2018 accusing the AP news wire and the journalist of publishing an article falsely alleging he committed sexual assault in the 1970s.
Those claims first appeared in two separate complaints filed with police that an AP reporter obtained from the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. One of the complaints, Wynn argued, was implausible on its face. A Nevada court in a separate proceeding found that complaint to have included "clearly fanciful or delusional" allegations.
Wynn has denied the sexual assault allegations.
Nevada's top court found that Wynn failed to show that a disputed 2018 AP report containing allegations of sexual assault had been published with "actual malice."
Wynn in his appeal had asked the justices to assess "whether this court should overturn Sullivan's actual-malice standard," as well as a related prior court decision. Wynn also had asked the court to assess whether state laws like Nevada's that impose the standard of "actual malice" at a preliminary stage of legal proceedings violate the Constitution's Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial.