Former judge and failed GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore brought an emergency motion to the Supreme Court, as he seeks to save the $8.2 million jury award he won over a campaign ad that he said falsely portrayed him as soliciting sex from a 14-year-old girl. An appeals court vacated the Alabama jury’s verdict in April, and Moore has signaled that he will appeal that loss to the justices.
In the meantime, his emergency application asked to halt the appellate ruling from taking effect while he prepares his Supreme Court petition. Moore said that without high court intervention, his ability to collect will be hampered if the justices ultimately grant review of his petition and side with him.
His application went to Justice Clarence Thomas, because Thomas is the justice assigned to receive urgent motions from the circuit that ruled against Moore on appeal. Justices can refer these filings to the full court or act on them alone. They typically refer significant ones to the full court (and when individual justices deny applications, applicants can then ask other justices for relief until they are fully rejected). Thomas does not yet appear to have acted on the application or called for the opposition to respond to it.
The appeals court last week declined to halt its ruling from taking effect while Moore petitions the justices. The group that ran the ad, Senate Majority PAC, successfully argued to the appeals court that it shouldn’t halt its ruling from taking effect because, among other reasons, it said the Supreme Court is unlikely even to grant review of Moore’s forthcoming petition, much less side with him.
Whatever the outcome of Moore’s application, the court will still be free to grant review of his petition after he files it and the opposition has a chance to respond.
As Moore noted in his application, Thomas and Justice Neil Gorsuch have urged reconsideration of the “actual malice” standard that public figures must meet to win defamation claims, a standard that stems from the court’s landmark 1964 opinion in New York Times v. Sullivan. But it takes four justices to grant review of petitions, and the issue has not gained traction at the high court.