Supreme Court won’t hear Roy Moore’s appeal over $8.2 million jury verdict in campaign ad dispute

The Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a challenge from Roy Moore, the former Alabama Supreme Court justice, to an appeals court ruling that wiped out a multi-million defamation verdict over a 2017 campaign ad that recounted allegations of sexual misconduct against him.

The decision effectively ends Moore’s long-running legal battle against Senate Majority PAC, a Democratic-aligned political action committee. The justices also turned away his emergency appeal to review the lower court order earlier this year without explanation.

The dispute centered on television commercials aired by Highway 31, a group backed by the Senate Majority PAC, during a 2017 special election that suggested Moore was banned from a local mall for soliciting sex from teenage girls.

The ads cited news reports detailing accusations of sexual misconduct by several women, including one woman who claimed Moore initiated a sexual encounter with her when she was 14, and he was in his 30s. Moore has denied the allegations.

The former judge, who was running as the GOP nominee for former Sen. Jeff Sessions’ seat in the Senate, ultimately lost the race to Democrat Doug Jones.

Moore sued the PAC and several others for defamation and invasion of privacy, arguing the commercials were misleading and falsely implied that he had solicited sex from a 14-year-old.

He was initially awarded $8.2 million by an Alabama jury in 2022, but a three-judge panel for the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the verdict after finding that Moore had failed to meet the “actual malice” standard created by New York Times v. Sullivan.

That standard requires public figures suing for defamation prove that the publisher knew the statement was false or acted with reckless disregard for the truth.

Moore’s lawyers had asked the Supreme Court to take another look.

“The repercussions extend far beyond this case,” they wrote in their petition.

“Modern political ads are built from excerpts of statements. If a publisher can escape a jury’s verdict by accurately quoting each fragment while manufacturing a false whole, Masson’s core holding is nullified for the very media where fabrication is easiest and most damaging,” his lawyers continued, referencing the 1991 Supreme Court precedent that established deliberately altering a direct quote does not amount to defamation unless it changes the factual meaning.

The Senate Majority PAC did not file a response to Moore’s petition.