The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to take up a defamation lawsuit filed against comedian Bill Cosby by a woman who said he raped her more than 40 years ago.
The justices rejected the appeal from actress Kathrine McKee, who said Cosby defamed her when his lawyer, Martin Singer, wrote and leaked a letter to the New York Daily News calling her a liar and a criminal, according to court filings.
A federal district court in Massachusetts, however, tossed our McKee’s lawsuit, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit agreed by ruling that McKee, under New York Times v. Sullivan, is a limited purpose public figure.
McKee came forward in December 2014 after numerous women accused Cosby of sexual assault, and said the actor forcibly raped her in 1974. The actress told the New York Daily News about the sexual assault and also appeared in a photo shoot for New York magazine alongside other Cosby victims.
McKee’s lawyers said that despite speaking publicly about her allegation against Cosby, she “has not become a prominent advocate in any public controversy, and has not publicly called for any change in the laws, or any social reforms, and has consistently maintained her privacy other than to say, as many other women have said, ‘me too.’”
In her petition to the court, lawyers for McKee urged the justices to take up the case “at this historical moment.”
“A person who decries sexual misconduct should not be stripped of the protections of private figure statue, such that she has virtually no recourse to protect her reputation through a defamation lawsuit. McKee should not be victimized twice over,” they wrote.
In agreeing with the Supreme Court’s decision not to consider McKee’s appeal, Justice Clarence Thomas suggested the high court reconsider the standard set in New York Times v. Sullivan, in which the court said a public figure must show a false statement was made with “actual malice” to win a defamation case.
“New York Times and the court’s decisions extending it were policy-driven decisions masquerading as constitutional law,” Thomas wrote. “Instead of simply applying the First Amendment as it was understood by the people who ratified it, the court fashioned its own ‘federal rule’ by balancing the ‘competing values at stake in defamation suits.’ We should not continue to reflexively apply this policy-driven approach to the Constitution.”
[Previous coverage: Bill Cosby gets to 3 to 10 years for 2004 sex assault]
