Greenbelt Cooperative Publishing Association, Inc. v. Bresler, 398 U.S. 6 (1970), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that using the word "blackmail" in a newspaper article "was no more than rhetorical hyperbole" and that finding such usage as libel "would subvert the most fundamental meaning of a free press" guaranteed by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Dorothy Sucher, a reporter for the Greenbelt News Review of Greenbelt, Maryland, covered a 1965 city council hearing in a case where developer Charles S. Bresler was trying to obtain variances to build a high-density housing development on land he owned while the city was seeking to purchase a parcel owned by Bresler that would be the site of a new high school.

[2] An article[3] written by Sucher in the October 14, 1965 issue of the Greenbelt News Review reporting on the council meeting quoted a resident saying that "It seems that this is a slight case of blackmail" continuing to state that "the word was echoed by many speakers from the audience" a charge that was rejected in the article by a city councilmember who said that this was not blackmail, but was part of a negotiations process that was "a two-way street".

The majority found that Bresler, who served in another district as a member of the Maryland House of Delegates, was a public figure as defined by New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (1964) and that the standard that the plaintiff would have to satisfy would be to show that the term was used with malice, with knowledge that the claim was false or in reckless disregard for the truth.

The court found no dispute with the contention that the descriptions in Sucher's article were accurately reported and that the word "blackmail" had been used.