WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear the case of a former Kentucky high school student and Donald Trump supporter who said he was a victim of “cancel culture” after a video surfaced of his interaction with an elderly Native American man. Viral in 2019.
The decision leaves in place the lower court's ruling to dismiss Nicholas Sandmann's massive defamation lawsuit against Gannett, the parent company of USA TODAY, and other media organizations over their coverage of the incident.
Sandmann said he was defamed by their reporting of his confrontation with Native American rights activist Nathan Phillips at the Lincoln Memorial in January 2019.
The Indigenous March and the March for Life, standing face to face
A video of Sandmann, then 16 and a student at Covington Catholic University in northern Kentucky, standing face-to-face with Phillips went viral, unleashing a storm of online criticism that the student's behavior was racially motivated, which Sandmann denied. Phillips was attending an Indigenous March while Sandmann was marching at a March for Life event.
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Sandmann filed lawsuits against eight media organizations, including The New York Times, ABC News, CBS News, and Rolling Stone magazine, seeking $1.25 billion for their coverage of the event.
A federal judge in Kentucky dismissed the lawsuit in 2022, ruling that Phillips' statement that Sandmann “blocked him and would not let him back down” — as reported by the media — was Phillips' opinion for which they could not be sued.
The Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the judge's dismissal.
In Sandmann's unsuccessful Supreme Court petition, his lawyer said the case “exemplified the high bar of cancel culture.”
Sandmann's lawyer said Sandmann went “from a quiet, anonymous teenager into a national social pariah, and his awkward smile in response to Phillips' aggression became a target for rage and hatred.”
Phillips' lawyer told the court that this happened due to “negligence” on the part of the media in investigating Phillips' description of the incident.
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The suit became a Cause celebrities For conservatives and talk show hosts.
Then-President Trump defended Sandmann and his fellow student on Twitter, claiming that the media had “smeared their reputations” with false reports.
In a speech at the 2020 Republican National Convention, Sandmann accused the media of trying to “cancel” him because he supports Trump.
In a 2019 video that went viral, Sandmann appeared wearing one of Trump's “Make America Great Again” campaign hats while smiling at Phillips, who was beating a drum and cheering.
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Some social media outlets at the time claimed the incident was racially motivated by the white teen, which Sandmann and other witnesses disputed. Sandmann filed a lawsuit, saying news coverage unfairly distorted him.
But the judge narrowed the scope of the lawsuit to focus only on whether the quote attributed to Phillips was defamatory.
“The media defendants were covering a matter of significant public interest and reported Phillips’ first-person view of what he experienced,” Senior U.S. Judge William Bertelsman wrote in dismissing the case in 2022.
When Sandmann appealed the ruling to the Supreme Court, the media waived its right to respond.
The Washington Post, NBC and CNN had previously reached a settlement with Sandmann.
