Does the First and Fourteenth Amendments' guarantee of freedom of speech and press prohibit a public official from recovering damages in a state libel action for a defamatory falsehood relating to his official conduct unless he proves the statement was made with actual malice?

L. B. Sullivan, one of three elected Commissioners of Montgomery, Alabama, supervised the city's Police Department, Fire Department, Department of Cemetery, and Department of Scales. On March 29, 1960, the New York Times carried a full-page advertisement, "Heed Their Rising Voices," placed by a civil rights committee supporting Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Southern student demonstrations. It appeared over the names of 64 signatories and carried a separate endorsement listing the four individual petitioners, who were Alabama clergymen, and 16 other persons. The third and sixth paragraphs described police conduct against student protesters and Dr. King, including police "ringing" a campus, padlocking a dining hall, and arresting King seven times. Sullivan was not named but claimed the statements referred to him as the Commissioner supervising the police. Some statements were inaccurate: the students sang the National Anthem, the campus was not ringed by police, the dining hall was not padlocked, and King had been arrested four times, not seven. Sullivan offered no proof of actual pecuniary loss. The Times accepted the ad on the strength of Randolph's letter and the signatories' reputations without checking its own news files. The individual petitioners testified they had not authorized use of their names. The Times declined to retract for Sullivan but later retracted for Governor Patterson.

Sullivan sued the four individual clergymen and the New York Times Company for libel in the Circuit Court of Montgomery County, Alabama. The trial judge instructed the jury that the statements were libelous per se, that falsity and malice were presumed, and that general damages were presumed. The jury returned a general verdict for Sullivan, awarding $500,000, the full amount claimed, against all petitioners. The trial judge rejected petitioners' First and Fourteenth Amendment objections. The Supreme Court of Alabama affirmed in all respects, 273 Ala. 656, 144 So. 2d 25, holding that the First Amendment does not protect libelous publications and that the Fourteenth Amendment applies only to state action. The United States Supreme Court granted certiorari on the separate petitions of the Times (No. 39) and the individual petitioners (No. 40), and the cases were argued separately but decided together.

(Brennan, J.)

Yes. The First and Fourteenth Amendments prohibit a public official from recovering damages for a defamatory falsehood relating to his official conduct unless he proves the statement was made with actual malice, meaning knowledge of falsity or reckless disregard of whether it was false.

The Alabama judgment was state action despite arising in a private civil suit, because the state courts applied a state rule of law restricting speech. The paid advertisement was not commercial speech under Valentine v. Chrestensen; it communicated information, opinion, and grievances on a matter of the highest public concern, and payment does not forfeit protection. Libel has no talismanic immunity from constitutional limits. Debate on public issues must be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open, and may include caustic attacks on public officials. Neither factual error nor injury to official reputation, alone or combined, removes constitutional protection from criticism of official conduct.

The Sedition Act of 1798, repudiated in the court of history, confirms that punishing criticism of government is inconsistent with the First Amendment, and civil damages can chill speech more than criminal penalties because they lack criminal safeguards, are not subject to double-jeopardy limits, and were here a thousand times the criminal fine. Requiring critics to prove truth produces self-censorship; erroneous statement is inevitable in free debate and needs breathing space to survive. A privilege for citizen-critics is analogous to the immunity officials enjoy under Barr v. Matteo.

Alabama's presumption of malice is invalid. Applying the federal rule, the evidence was constitutionally insufficient. The individual petitioners had no knowledge of any falsity. Against the Times, the evidence showed at most negligence in failing to check its files, not recklessness; its Secretary's opinion that the ad was substantially correct, its good-faith retraction distinctions, and its reliance on respected sponsors do not show actual malice. The evidence also could not support a finding that the statements were "of and concerning" Sullivan, because the only link was his official position, and a rule that criticism of government is automatically libel of the officials in charge is unconstitutional. The judgment is reversed and remanded.

Concurrence (Black, J.) The First and Fourteenth Amendments do not merely limit but completely prohibit a State from awarding damages to public officials for criticism of their official conduct. Actual malice is an elusive concept that provides only evanescent protection for public discussion. The half-million-dollar verdict, together with pending suits seeking millions more, shows state libel laws threaten the existence of a free press. The Constitution grants an absolute, unconditional immunity for criticism of how public officials perform their duties, and the Court's rule is a stopgap.

Concurrence in the result (Goldberg, J.) The Constitution affords citizens and the press an absolute, unconditional privilege to criticize official conduct, despite harm from excesses and abuses; the right should not depend on a jury's probing of motive. Because governors are responsible to the governed, criticism of government is necessarily "of and concerning" the officials, so libel on official conduct can have no place in the Constitution. The majority rejected this view, holding that an official's position alone cannot make an impersonal attack on government a statement about him. This protection does not extend to purely private defamation of public officials or private citizens. Officials hold absolute immunity for their own official statements, and citizens deserve equivalent immunity when criticizing them. Officials retain counterargument as a remedy.