Citing free speech, judge dismisses Covington Catholic student's lawsuit against The Washington Post

ERIC BARADAT/AFP/Getty Images
(Image credit: The Washington Post.)

The Washington Post can breathe a bit more easily.

A federal judge in Kentucky on Friday dismissed a defamation lawsuit filed against the Post by Nicholas Sandmann, a student at Covington Catholic High School in Park Hills, Kentucky. Sandmann and his family sought $250 million in damages over the newspaper's reporting about Sandmann's confrontation with a Native American activist on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., in January during an anti-abortion rally in the capital. The report, Politico writes, caused Sandmann, who is white and appeared to be wearing a Make America Great Again hat at the time, to be "castigated" for "apparently intimidating a person of color."

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Tim O'Donnell

Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.