You may remember the name Nicholas Sandmann from the Catholic high school student’s confrontation with a Native American a few years back in Washington.
Now there’s more:
The Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear the case of a former Kentucky high school student and supporter of Donald Trump who said he’d been the victim of “cancel culture” after a video of his interaction with an elderly Native American man went viral in 2019.
That decision leaves in place a lower court’s dismissal of a massive libel lawsuit filed by Nicholas Sandmann against Gannett, the parent company of USA TODAY, and other media organizations for their coverage of the incident.
Sandmann argued he was defamed by their reports on his confrontation with Native American rights activist Nathan Phillips at the Lincoln Memorial in January 2019.
A video of Sandmann, then 16 and a student at Covington Catholic in Northern Kentucky, standing nose to nose with Phillips went viral and unleashed a firestorm of internet criticism that the student’s conduct was racially motivated, which Sandmann denied. Phillips was attending an “Indigenous People’s March” while Sandmann was walking in a “March for Life” event.
Sandmann filed lawsuits against eight media organizations, including the New York Times, ABC News, CBS News and Rolling Stone magazine, seeking a combined $1.25 billion for their coverage of the event.
A federal judge in Kentucky dismissed the suit in 2022, ruling that Phillips’ statement that Sandmann “blocked him and wouldn’t allow him to retreat” – as reported by the media – was Phillips’ opinion for which they could not be sued.
