Litigation » Trump, Gorsuch Differ On Free Press Views

Trump, Gorsuch Differ On Free Press Views

February 21, 2017

Woodcut expressionist style of the metaphor for blind justice.

Though President Donald Trump promised on the campaign trail to “open up those libel laws,” and has more recently called the news media “the enemy of the American people,” his pick for the Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch, does not appear to share his opinion or goals. “Judge Gorsuch’s decisions in libel and related cases show no inclination to cut back on protections for the press,” the New York Times notes. The Times cites several rulings penned by Gorsuch, including one in which he said minor inaccuracies in a news report may never serve as the basis for a libel suit, calling that a “First Amendment imperative.” Gayle C. Spoul, a lawyer with Philadelphia’s Levine Sullivan Koch & Schulz, said: “In a handful of opinions where he has weighed in on the subject, Judge Gorsuch shows no indication that he will ‘open up libel laws’ to muzzle the press, as the president appears to hope.” Eugene Volokh, a First Amendment law expert at the University of California, Los Angeles, added: “To the extent people are worried that President Trump has an anti-libel-protection project, there’s nothing to suggest Neil would share that project.”

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