Former Alaska governor and 2008 U.S. vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin will get another chance in court to prove that the New York Times unlawfully defamed her with a 2017 editorial that accused her of inciting violence in the lead up to the 2011 shooting of U.S. Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.

The Times editorial was published following the 2017 shooting during a congressional baseball practice, and it initially blamed Palin for the violence because of a campaign ad from her political action committee, which depicted crosshairs over vulnerable U.S. congressional districts held by 20 Democrats, including Giffords’. The times issued a correction and admitted that there was no connection between the ad and the shooting that wounded Giffords.

Palin, however, took issue with the wording of the Times’ original editorial which stated that “the link to political incitement was clear,” when referring to the Palin map and the 2011 shooting. Palin argued in court that it resulted in considerable backlash. She did not prevail, however, in her 2022 case.

On Aug. 28, the 2^nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals determined that Palin should have another chance to demonstrate that the Times recklessly or knowingly connected her to the Giffords shooting, which also resulted in the death of six other people.

A three-judge panel determined that U.S. District Court Judge Jed Rakoff compromised Palin’s 2022 trial by wrongly excluding evidence and misleading jurors about the legal threshold needed to prove the Times acted with actual malice toward Palin by knowingly or recklessly publishing false information about her.

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