Supreme Court Won’t Hear Journalist Chuck Johnson’s Libel Appeal Against Huffington Post

Arianna Huffington, president and editor-in-chief of the Huffington Post Media Group, poses at a Huffington Post office in a file photograph. (Dominique Faget/AFP/Getty Images)

The Supreme Court declined on Dec. 5 to hear the appeal of the controversial and formerly high-profile journalist Chuck Johnson, who sued the Huffington Post website over characterizing him as a white nationalist in a 2019 article.

Some online businesses had watched the case carefully, fearing that if the Supreme Court had agreed to take the case and ultimately ruled against the Huffington Post on the merits, suing online publishers and media outlets for libel or other civil wrongs could have been made easier.

On the presidential campaign trail in February 2016, then-candidate Donald Trump promised to ease libel lawsuit prerequisites so when media outlets publish “purposely negative and horrible and false articles, we can sue them and win lots of money. We’re going to open up those libel laws.”

The high court turned down the request to hear the case in an unsigned order in Johnson v. TheHuffingtonPost.com Inc., court file 22-82. The court did not explain why, consistent with its usual practice when rejecting cases.

The Huffington Post said through a spokesperson that it welcomes the court’s refusal of the appeal.

“We are pleased with the outcome and this resounding victory for HuffPost,” the spokesperson told The Epoch Times in a brief emailed statement.

The appeal was brought by Charles C. Johnson, 34, often identified as Chuck Johnson, founder of the now-defunct GotNews.com investigative journalism website and other websites. He is not to be confused with Charles F. Johnson, who runs the left-of-center blog, Little Green Footballs.

A supporter of former President Trump for years who claimed to have influence with the Trump administration, Chuck Johnson told Rolling Stone in October 2021 that he now supports President Joe Biden. Johnson also said in the article that he was cooperating with law enforcement officials investigating Stephen Bannon, the filmmaker, talk show host, and former Trump White House chief strategist. Johnson wrote articles for Breitbart News when Bannon ran the news website. On Oct. 21 of this year Bannon was sentenced to four months of incarceration for two counts of contempt of Congress stemming from failing to comply with a subpoena issued by the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, breach of the United States Capitol.

Johnson sued the Huffington Post in federal district court in Houston over a January 2019 article that described him as a “noted Holocaust denier and white nationalist.” Johnson has questioned how many Jewish people were killed by the Nazis but, according to an update to the article, a year later he told the website he “believes that there was a systematic campaign to commit atrocities against Jewish people during the Second World War.” Johnson added he “is not anti-Semitic.”

Johnson’s arguments in papers filed with the Supreme Court centered more on technical legal issues such as jurisdiction, rather than the alleged libel itself.

Johnson’s lawyer said in the petition (pdf) filed with the Supreme Court on July 26 that Johnson, a Texas resident, brought his libel lawsuit in Texas because the Huffington Post does business in and is available to users in Texas. For example, Johnson introduced evidence that “the terms of service governing the Website specifically provide that the user consents to location access for the purpose of targeted marketing.”

The Huffington Post argued it had no physical ties to the Lone Star State, that the article did not mention Texas, quote sources in Texas, or mention any of Johnson’s activities there.

Johnson argued that his position was bolstered by the Supreme Court’s ruling in Keeton v. Hustler Magazine Inc. (1984) which held a New Hampshire court could hear a New York resident’s libel suit against the publication because it “continuously and deliberately exploited the New Hampshire market” by selling thousands of subscriptions to residents of New Hampshire. Because the Huffington Post received revenues for ads aimed at readers in Texas and had ties to the state, Johnson took the position that Texas courts had jurisdiction.

But a divided U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit panel disagreed, finding that the Keeton ruling “did not forge an iron law of specific jurisdiction for all publishers in all mediums.” The court found that the fact that the Huffington Post is available to online readers in Texas does not demonstrate a strong enough connection to the state to justify allowing the lawsuit to proceed there, Reuters stated in a case preview earlier this year.

The Epoch Times reached out repeatedly to Johnson’s counsel of record, Joseph David Sibley IV of Austin, Texas, but had not received a reply as of press time.