She argued her reputation was damaged by the Times opinion piece titled America’s Lethal Politics, written by James Bennet. It said Palin’s rhetoric helped incite the 2011 mass shooting in an Arizona parking lot that severely wounded former US congresswoman Gabby Giffords and killed six other people.
A fundraising group for Palin had circulated a map of electoral districts that put Giffords and 19 other Democrats under “stylised crosshairs”, the newspaper said.
It corrected the editorial 14 hours after it appeared online and conceded the wording used in it was flawed.
US law sets a particularly high bar for media to be found liable for defamation when writing about public figures.
The judge in Palin’s original lawsuit said she failed to prove the Times acted with “actual malice”, a sentiment echoed by the Times’s lawyers after Tuesday’s ruling.
“To win this case, Governor Palin needs to prove that the New York Times and James Bennet did not care about the truth,” said Felicia Ellsworth, a lawyer for the newspaper.
“There has not been one shred of evidence showing anything other than an honest mistake.”
Palin’s lawyer Ken Turkel had a different take, saying during closing arguments that “this is not an honest mistake”.
“For [Palin], it was a life-changer,” Mr Turkel said.
In 2022, Palin twice lost to her Democratic challenger during a bid for Congress, once during a special election and once during the midterms.
The Republican ran for vice-president with the late Senator John McCain, who was defeated in 2008 by Barack Obama.
