The origins of the United States' defamation laws pre-date the American Revolution; one influential case in 1734 involved John Peter Zenger and established precedent that "The Truth" is an absolute defense against charges of libel.
Though the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution was designed to protect freedom of the press, for most of the history of the United States, the U.S. Supreme Court failed to use it to rule on libel cases.
The 1964 case New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, however, radically changed the nature of libel law in the United States by establishing that public officials could win a suit for libel only when they could prove the media outlet in question knew either that the information was wholly and patently false or that it was published "with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not".
Defenses to libel that can result in dismissal before trial include the statement being one of opinion rather than fact or being "fair comment and criticism", though neither of these are imperatives on the US constitution.
In one of the most famous cases, New York City publisher John Peter Zenger was imprisoned for eight months in 1734 for printing attacks on the governor of the colony.
Gouverneur Morris, a major contributor in the framing of the U.S. Constitution said, "The trial of Zenger in 1735 was the germ of American freedom, the morning star of that liberty which subsequently revolutionized America".
In that case, the court determined that public officials could win a suit for libel only if they could demonstrate "actual malice" on the part of reporters or publishers.
In Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., 418 U.S. 323 (1974), the Supreme Court suggested that a plaintiff could not win a defamation suit when the statements in question were expressions of opinion rather than fact.
In Gertz, the Supreme Court also established a mens rea or culpability requirement for defamation; states cannot impose strict liability because that would run afoul of the First Amendment.
Ct. May 24, 1995), applied the standard publisher/distributor test to find an online bulletin board liable for post by a third party, Congress specifically enacted 47 U.S.C.
[8] In 2014 the Ninth Circuit Court ruled in Obsidian Finance Group, LLC v. Cox[9] that liability for a defamatory blog post involving a matter of public concern cannot be imposed without proof of fault and actual damages.
[11] The Court held that in defamation cases not the identity of the speaker, but rather the public-figure status of a plaintiff and the public importance of the statement at issue provide the First Amendment foundation.
Most plaintiffs are corporations, businesspeople, entertainers and other public figures, and people involved in criminal cases, usually defendants or convicts but sometimes victims as well.
[14] All states except Arkansas,[citation needed] Missouri and Tennessee recognize that some categories of false statements are so innately harmful that they are considered to be defamatory per se.
Statements are defamatory per se where they falsely impute to the plaintiff one or more of the following things:[2] On the federal level, there are no criminal defamation or insult laws in the United States.