WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court has declined to take up the defamation case of a former Kentucky Catholic high school student, Nicholas Sandmann, who claimed he had been unfairly portrayed by several media outlets after a video of his interaction with a Native American man went viral five years ago.
The case was listed March 25 along with dozens of other cases the court was not going to hear. By not taking this case, the court lets a lower court’s ruling stand that had dismissed the $1.25 billion libel lawsuit Sandmann filed against The New York Times, ABC News, CBS News, and Gannett.
Sandmann has argued that his reputation was harmed by media reports of his interaction with Nathan Phillips at the Lincoln Memorial in 2019. At the time, Phillips was taking part in the Indigenous People’s March and Sandmann, who was 16, was in Washington with his school for the annual March for Life.
In video footage of the high schooler and the Native American, Sandmann, wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat, smiled just inches away from Phillips as Phillips chanted and beat a drum.
Clips from a video of that encounter went viral almost immediately, which showed students surrounding Phillips while appearing to be mocking him. The clip caused immediate outrage, particularly on social media.
But by the next day, extended footage of how the situation unfolded revealed that another group had taunted the students, and some responded back. Phillips said he had walked over to the students and the group as an intervention.
After the initial video went viral, Sandmann said in a statement that he had “received physical and death threats via social media, as well as hateful insults.”
Sandmann’s lawyers reached confidential settlements with The Washington Post and CNN in 2020 and with NBC News in 2021.
A federal judge in Kentucky dismissed Sandmann’s defamation lawsuit against other publications in 2022. The judge narrowed the suit to focus only on whether a quote attributed to Phillips, who said Sandmann “blocked him and wouldn’t allow him to retreat,” was defamatory. He said the quote was Phillips’ opinion for which the media outlets could not be sued.
The Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the judge’s dismissal.
In Sandmann’s appeal to the Supreme Court, his lawyer said the case has “come to epitomize the high-water mark of the ‘cancel culture.’” He also said Sandmann went from a “quiet, anonymous teenager into a national social pariah, one whose embarrassed smile in response to Phillips’ aggression became a target for anger and hatred.”
In a January column in Newsweek magazine, Sandmann wrote that he is now a senior in college and hopes to work in politics after graduating.
He said he has spoken to some priests who told him, “It was up to me to make something out of what happened and use it as an opportunity. That’s what led me to politics.
“My end goal is to help people by bringing about change in their lives, and I can do that by working with elected representatives,” he added.