Alan Dershowitz lost. Again. The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday refused to resurrect the retired Harvard law professor’s defamation lawsuit against CNN, putting a quiet end to a noisy grudge match. Dershowitz wanted revenge over how the network covered his defense of Donald Trump during the 2020 impeachment circus. He didn’t get it.
The high court’s rejection leaves a lower court ruling intact, shielding the Warner Bros. Discovery-owned network from the academic’s wrath. But Dershowitz wasn’t just hunting CNN. He wanted a bigger trophy. He begged the justices to dismantle New York Times v. Sullivan, the landmark 1964 ruling that makes it incredibly hard for famous people to sue the press. Under Sullivan, public figures must prove “actual malice”—meaning the media outlet lied on purpose or acted with reckless disregard for the truth. Dershowitz called this standard an “impregnable fortress” for irresponsible reporters. The justices, apparently, disagreed.
The whole mess started in 2020. Trump was on trial in the Senate for trying to squeeze Ukraine into digging up dirt on Joe Biden. Dershowitz, who previously wrote a book arguing against impeachment, joined the president’s defense team. He gave a speech. It raised eyebrows.
CNN ran with a specific clip. In it, Dershowitz argued that if a president does something to help his reelection because he believes his victory is in the public interest, it cannot be an impeachable quid pro quo. Democrats gasped. Dershowitz sued. He claimed CNN sliced and diced his words to make him look like a constitutional scholar who had completely lost his mind. CNN pushed back. They argued that weakening Sullivan would wreck decades of legal precedent. Besides, they said, they aired his full remarks and even interviewed him twice to let him explain himself.
The courts weren’t buying Dershowitz’s outrage. A Florida federal judge threw the case out in 2023. The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed in 2025, noting there was zero evidence CNN acted with actual malice. It was a tough break for a guy used to winning. Dershowitz’s client list reads like a rogue’s gallery of the rich and infamous: Jeffrey Epstein, O.J. Simpson, Mike Tyson, and Julian Assange.
Some justices wanted to play. Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch have practically begged to tear up the Sullivan precedent, complaining that today’s media landscape is a swamp of disinformation. But the rest of the bench isn’t biting. Just recently, in 2025, they ignored a similar plea from casino billionaire Steve Wynn. Dershowitz is just the latest big name to find out that in the highest court in the land, some precedents are simply too heavy to move.
