A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit on Friday reversed a lower court jury verdict that had awarded Roy Moore $8.2 million in damages in 2022, handing the former Alabama Senate candidate another legal defeat tied to sexual misconduct allegations from his 2017 campaign.
Judge Elizabeth L. Branch wrote for the panel, which found Moore failed to prove by clear and convincing evidence that the Senate Majority PAC acted with actual malice. The appeal centered on a television ad that implied Moore had solicited sex from a 14-year-old girl working as a Santa’s helper at the Gadsden, Ala., mall, a claim Moore said had not appeared in any of the news reports and that he disputed at trial.
The ad was part of a 2017 Senate campaign effort by the Senate Majority PAC, which said the wording was imprecise and that any implication was unintentional. The group also argued that the statement did not change the overall gist of the allegations facing Moore, which originated with a Washington Post article in November 2017 and quickly became central to his political collapse that year.
The decision extends a long losing streak for Moore in federal court. He has brought at least three other defamation suits over the 2017 reports and lost each one, including one in the Eleventh Circuit against Washington Examiner writers and another in the Second Circuit against comedian Sacha Baron Cohen. In effect, the appeals court’s ruling leaves intact the legal barrier public figures face when they try to turn disputed political attacks into defamation wins. As Jeffrey Wittenbrink put it, “The conventional wisdom is that a public figure can’t hardly get a judgment for defamation.”
Friday’s decision answers the central question in Moore’s appeal: the $8.2 million verdict will not stand.