AL-SEN: Appeals court overturns $8.2 million award to Roy Moore over Democratic PAC's ad [View all]

A federal appeals court has wiped out a jury’s $8.2 million award to former Alabama Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore over a Democratic group’s TV ad about allegations that Moore solicited teen girls for sex.

The claims, which appeared in numerous news articles by local and national journalists, roiled the 2017 special election for a Senate seat from Alabama, torpedoing the staunchly conservative Moore’s campaign.

In 2019, Moore sued the Senate Majority PAC, claiming that the group libeled him and subjected him to false light invasion of privacy by suggesting that he sought sex from a 14-year-old girl working as a “Santa’s helper” at a shopping mall in Gadsden, Alabama.


At issue was an ad aired by SMP in the closing weeks of the election that included several frames displaying quotes from the news articles about Moore’s alleged conduct. One frame quoted a New American Journal article that reported “Moore was actually banned from the Gadsden Mall . . . for soliciting sex from young girls.” An immediately subsequent frame quoting the same article read “[o]ne he approached ‘was 14 and working as Santa’s helper.’”




https://www.politico.com/news/2026/04/24/roy-moore-appeals-court-ruling-00890920