Dershowitz’s CNN Lawsuit: Eleventh Circuit Ruling and Supreme Court Bid

Alan Dershowitz’s defamation lawsuit against CNN, filed in September 2020 and seeking $300 million over the network’s coverage of his arguments during President Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial, has lost at every level so far and is now sitting before the U.S. Supreme Court on a petition that asks the justices to reconsider the landmark 1964 precedent New York Times Co. v. Sullivan. A federal district judge granted CNN summary judgment in April 2023, a unanimous Eleventh Circuit panel affirmed in August 2025, and as of mid-2026 the Supreme Court has repeatedly relisted the certiorari petition without acting on it.

The Impeachment Remark at the Heart of the Case

On January 29, 2020, answering a question from Senator Ted Cruz during the Senate impeachment trial, Dershowitz argued that a president acting on mixed motives, including his own reelection, could not be impeached for a quid pro quo if he genuinely believed his reelection served the public interest. His exact words: “If a President does something which he believes will help him get elected — in the public interest — that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment.”¹ He had also said that “the only thing that would make a quid pro quo unlawful is if the quo were somehow illegal.”²

CNN’s on-air segments and headlines characterized him as arguing that a president could do essentially anything to win reelection without facing impeachment. Anderson Cooper said Dershowitz was claiming a president “can do essentially whatever they want” to win reelection. Contributor Paul Begala compared the argument to Richard Nixon’s “If the President does it, it isn’t illegal” defense. Internal CNN emails later produced in discovery showed then-network president Jeff Zucker and staff describing the argument as the “Trump legal team making argument that a President is King & can do whatever he wants.”¹

Dershowitz’s theory was that CNN had aired the full clip earlier the same day, then deliberately cut out his qualifier about illegal conduct, leaving viewers with an inversion of what he had actually said.

The Lawsuit and What Dershowitz Sought

Dershowitz filed his complaint on September 15, 2020, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida. He pleaded a single count of defamation covering both libel and slander, sought $50 million in compensatory damages and $250 million in punitive damages, and alleged that CNN’s coverage had cost him speaking invitations from outlets he preferred, damaged his reputation as a legal scholar, and subjected him to ridicule and lost earnings.³ The complaint called CNN’s editing a “deliberate scheme to defraud its own audience.”⁴

The District Court: Past the Motion to Dismiss, Then Out at Summary Judgment

The case initially survived. On May 25, 2021, U.S. District Judge Raag Singhal denied CNN’s motion to dismiss. He ruled that the truncated clip “changed the gist” of Dershowitz’s actual argument, that the on-air commentary went beyond pure opinion into “mixed expressions of opinion” that could imply false facts, and that Dershowitz had plausibly alleged actual malice, given that CNN had aired the full remarks earlier and then cut them in a way that made his argument mean “the opposite of what he actually said.”³

After discovery, the same judge came out the other way. On April 4, 2023, Judge Singhal granted CNN summary judgment, ending the case at the trial level. He wrote that the record might show “foolishness, apathy, and an inability to string together a series of common legal principles,” but contained “no proof” that any CNN commentator or producer knew the reporting was false or seriously doubted its accuracy — the actual-malice showing required to hold a media defendant liable for defaming a public figure.⁵

The judge rejected the argument that hostile internal emails, including one with the subject line “Dersh-o-nuts,” proved a coordinated smear, holding that personal animosity is not the same as constitutional actual malice. He also found that CNN had no First Amendment obligation to include qualifications Dershowitz had made two days earlier, and that the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics had “no evidentiary value” on the malice question. In an aside, Judge Singhal called New York Times v. Sullivan “a great example of how bad facts can contribute to the making of unnecessary law.”⁶

The Eleventh Circuit Affirms, With Two Dueling Concurrences

On August 29, 2025, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit unanimously affirmed. Judge Britt Grant wrote the panel opinion, joined by Judges Barbara Lagoa and Charles Wilson. The court held that CNN’s commentators sincerely believed their characterizations were accurate, that reporting may have been “mistaken or even overwrought” without being made with actual malice, and that similar takes among the various CNN voices reflected “ideological lockstep” rather than a coordinated scheme. Several contributors had tweeted their critical readings while Dershowitz was still speaking, which undercut the theory that CNN manufactured its interpretation later.⁷

The unusual feature of the ruling was that Judges Lagoa and Wilson each wrote separately, in opposite directions.

Judge Lagoa: Sullivan Should Be Reconsidered

Judge Lagoa agreed the panel was bound by precedent but wrote that “there can be little dispute that CNN ‘defamed’ Alan Dershowitz under any common understanding of that term,” saying CNN’s anchors and writers “repeatedly misrepresented statements” that were easily checked against Senate transcripts and video, and in some instances “simply lied about what Dershowitz had said.”⁷ She called Sullivan a “policy-driven” ruling “dressed up as constitutional law,” argued the standard leaves public figures effectively unable to protect their reputations in court, and cited Blackstone and early American authorities for the proposition that defamation of public figures was historically treated as more, not less, serious.¹ She also pointed to concrete harm in the record: outlets Dershowitz considered more desirable stopped inviting him on after the CNN coverage.

Judge Wilson: Sullivan Remains Essential

Judge Wilson used his concurrence to defend the standard. He called Sullivan a “foundation stone of the rule of law,” argued it allows courts to quickly dispose of meritless defamation claims while preventing the self-censorship that liability for every interpretive error would produce, and warned that overruling it would dampen “the vigor and the variety of public debate.” He rejected the historical case for reversal, noting American libel law had moved away from the English model and that the Founders rejected the “English rule of libels on government.”⁸

The Supreme Court Petition

On December 29, 2025, after Justice Clarence Thomas granted an extension, Dershowitz filed a petition for a writ of certiorari, docketed as No. 25-770. Filed by the American Center for Law and Justice, it presents three questions: whether a defendant’s systematic omission of qualifying language from a plaintiff’s recorded statement can constitute proof of actual malice sufficient to survive summary judgment; whether the actual malice standard should be “discarded altogether or at least as to private citizens who are public figures”; and whether the Court should modify Sullivan‘s clear-and-convincing evidence requirement and shift the burden of proof to defendants.⁹

The petition argues the Eleventh Circuit’s ruling conflicts with decisions in the Second, Third, Fifth, and Ninth Circuits holding that deliberate omission of material context can support a finding of actual malice. It presents the case as an “ideal vehicle” because CNN indisputably possessed the full statement and edited out the qualifier, and it points to prior skepticism of Sullivan from Justices Thomas and Gorsuch, and to Judge Lagoa’s concurrence below.

CNN’s Opposition

CNN filed its brief in opposition on April 17, 2026, calling Dershowitz a “uniquely unfit petitioner to force a constitutional showdown” over First Amendment law.¹⁰ The network argued that Florida state defamation law independently requires proof of actual malice for public-figure claims, so modifying Sullivan‘s constitutional standard would not change the outcome; that the claimed circuit split is a “nonexistent conflict” because the Eleventh Circuit rejected the factual premise that CNN intentionally hid information; and that Sullivan was “correctly decided” and remains a “cornerstone of free speech and democracy.” CNN also framed the statements at issue as protected opinion and interpretation of ambiguous remarks rather than provably false factual assertions.¹¹

Where the Case Stands

The Supreme Court requested CNN’s response on February 17, 2026. After briefing, the petition has been distributed for conference six times: on February 20, May 21, May 28, June 4, June 11, and June 18, 2026.¹² Repeated relisting sometimes signals that a justice is writing a separate opinion tied to the cert decision, though it can also reflect routine scheduling. SCOTUSblog has noted that while Justices Thomas and Gorsuch have “repeatedly written cert-stage opinions that criticized Sullivan,” the other justices “have not shown much interest in revisiting that case,” and the petition looks “more likely to produce separate writing than a grant.”¹³ The petition remains pending.

Why the Case Matters Beyond Dershowitz

The lawsuit has become a focal point in a longer argument about whether the actual malice standard should survive. Justice Thomas first called for revisiting Sullivan in his concurrence in McKee v. Cosby (2019), writing that the decision and its extensions were untethered from the Constitution’s original meaning. Justice Gorsuch joined the call in his dissent from denial of certiorari in Berisha v. Lawson (2021), questioning whether the current rules leave Americans “without recourse for grievous defamation.”¹⁴

Defenders of the standard say it provides essential breathing room for journalism and that weakening it would invite politically motivated libel suits. They point to the settlement in Dominion Voting Systems v. Fox News as evidence that the standard is not insurmountable when the proof of actual malice is strong.¹⁵ Whether the Supreme Court uses Dershowitz’s petition as the vehicle to take up any of that remains an open question.

1
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. Dershowitz v. Cable News Network, Inc., No. 23-11270
2
Courthouse News Service. Dershowitz v. Cable News Network, Complaint
3
FindLaw. Dershowitz v. Cable News Network, Inc.
4
Reason. Alan Dershowitz’s Libel Case Over CNN’s Coverage of His Defense in Trump Impeachment Thrown Out
5
FindLaw. Dershowitz v. Cable News Network, Inc., Summary Judgment
6
The Well News. CNN Wins Dershowitz Defamation Lawsuit
7
Courthouse News Service. 11th Circuit Tosses Alan Dershowitz Defamation Claims Against CNN
8
Reason. Judge Charles Wilson Defends New York Times v. Sullivan
9
U.S. Supreme Court. Dershowitz v. Cable News Network, Petition for Writ of Certiorari
10
Law360. CNN Says High Court Should Reject Dershowitz’s Appeal
11
U.S. Supreme Court. Dershowitz v. Cable News Network, Brief in Opposition
12
U.S. Supreme Court. Docket, Dershowitz v. Cable News Network, No. 25-770
13
SCOTUSblog. New York Times v. Sullivan, Service and Sentence Credits
14
National Constitution Center. Another Challenge to a Landmark Supreme Court Free Press Decision
15
Ohio State University Moritz College of Law. Reconsidering New York Times v. Sullivan