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, dissenting.

I join ’s dissent in full. I write separately to address the majority’s surprising and misplaced reliance on New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U. S. 254 (1964). In New York Times, this Court held that the First Amendment bars public figures from recovering damages for defamation unless they can show that the statement at issue was made with “ ‘actual malice’—that is, with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.” Id., at 280. Like the majority’s decision today, “New York Times and the Court’s decisions extending it were policy-driven decisions masquerading as constitutional law.” McKee v. Cosby, 586 U. S. ___, ___ (2019) (, concurring in denial of certiorari) (slip op., at 2). Instead of simply applying the First Amendment as it was understood at the time of the Founding, “the Court fashioned its own ‘ “federal rule[s]” ’ by balancing the ‘competing values at stake in defamation suits.’ ” Ibid. (quoting Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., 418 U. S. 323, 334, 348 (1974)); see also Bose Corp. v. Consumers Union of United States, Inc., 466 U. S. 485, 501–502 (1984) (acknowledging that “the rule enunciated in the New York Times case” is “largely a judge-made rule of law,” the “content” of which is “given meaning through the evolutionary process of common-law adjudication”). “The constitutional libel rules adopted by