Supreme Court rejects Roy Moore's bid to restore $8.2m defamation verdict

The US Supreme Court on Monday (5 October) rejected Roy Moore’s bid to restore an $8.2 million defamation verdict over a 2017 Senate race advert funded by a Democratic-aligned super PAC, according to the Associated Press.

The justices declined to hear Moore’s appeal against a lower-court decision that vacated the award, leaving in place the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that erased the jury’s finding that Moore had been defamed. The outcome is a victory for Senate Majority PAC, which funded the advert and argued it was truthful. It follows the court’s June rejection of Moore’s emergency request to put the 11th Circuit decision on hold while he appealed.

Moore, a former Alabama chief justice known for his hardline opposition to same-sex marriage and support for the public display of the Ten Commandments, lost the 2017 Senate race after his campaign was rocked by misconduct allegations. Leigh Corfman said Moore inappropriately touched her in 1979, when she was 14 and he was a 32-year-old assistant district attorney. Moore denied the accusation; other women said Moore dated them or asked them out when they were older teenagers.

Senate Majority PAC funded Highway 31, a group that ran an advertising blitz against Moore. His lawsuit centred on a television advert that his lawyers argued spliced statements and partial quotes from separate news articles to falsely imply he had been accused of soliciting sex from young girls at a shopping mall. His lawyers called it a “fabricated accusation, never made by any reporter” that was “broadcast into Alabama homes 533 times in the final days of a United States Senate election.”

A federal jury agreed with Moore in 2022 and awarded him $8.2 million, but the appeals court vacated the verdict after finding he had failed to prove the organisation acted with malice — one of the legal standards for cases involving public figures.

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