Two juries, two states, two days: Press loses defamation trials on consecutive business days

On August 21, 2026, an Alabama jury awarded $9.25 million against The New York Times for wrongly placing a basketball player at a fatal shooting. Three business days later, a Louisiana jury awarded $300,000 to a state Supreme Court justice over a 2019 Advocate editorial. Both verdicts cleared the "actual malice" standard — the high constitutional bar protecting publishers since 1964's New York Times Co. v. Sullivan. Whether that shield still holds may now be the question.