Roy Moore’s defamation case against a super PAC tied to his 2017 Alabama Senate campaign ended with an appeals court ruling reversing an $8.2 million verdict, according to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The panel said Moore, a former Republican state judge, did not meet the “actual malice” standard required for defamation suits brought by public figures. In Friday’s decision, the three judges vacated the verdict and directed the trial court to enter summary judgment for Senate Majority PAC.
The dispute arose from a television advertisement funded by Senate Majority PAC during the 2017 campaign. The ad recounted misconduct allegations that had been publicly reported about Moore and included language that his lawyers argued created a false implication about what he allegedly did.
Moore sued Senate Majority PAC after the ad ran, and his legal team argued the commercial—through “the juxtaposition of statements and partial quotes from news articles”—falsely suggested Moore solicited sex from young girls at a shopping mall.
In the ad, written statements included that “Roy Moore was actually banned from the Gadsden Mall … for soliciting sex from young girls.” The commercial also included the phrase “one he approached was 14 and working as a Santa’s helper,” according to the appeals-court description of the dispute. During testimony in the underlying trial, the woman described how Moore approached her and said he was likely flirting, but she testified he did not solicit sex.
The appellate judges concluded that the evidence did not support the intent needed for “actual malice” in a defamation-by-implication case. The decision said the PAC made a “negligent error at best,” but that negligence was not enough to meet the legal threshold for a public-figure defamation claim.
In a written opinion, U.S. Circuit Judge Elizabeth Branch said the evidence discussed was inadequate “to support a finding of the necessary intent to defame for purposes of actual malice in a defamation-by-implication case.”
Moore’s attorney, Jeff Wittenbrink, said in response to the ruling that he was disappointed and that the defense was considering asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review the decision. Wittenbrink said the Supreme Court “may look at the whole doctrine of actual malice,” calling the reversal of the jury’s verdict “egregious.”
Senate Majority PAC attorney Ezra Reese issued a statement characterizing the decision as a vindication. Reese said Senate Majority PAC “ran an advertisement that cited accurate reporting from major national news outlets detailing the women who bravely came forward with allegations about Moore’s inappropriate conduct,” and he said the PAC “told Alabama voters the truth.”
Reese also said Moore’s campaign lost in part because voters “correctly decided that they did not want a disgusting creep like Roy Moore representing them in the United States Senate,” language included in his statement describing the ruling.
Moore and Leigh Corfman, a woman who accused Moore of misconduct when she was 14, had also brought defamation claims against each other. A jury in 2022 deliberated for about three hours before ruling that neither side had proved its case in an emotionally charged trial in which both Moore and Corfman testified.
The appeals-court decision did not disturb those jury findings in the separate dispute between Moore and Corfman, but it did overturn the separate $8.2 million verdict against Senate Majority PAC tied to the 2017 television ad.