From Friday's decision by Judge Denise Cote (S.D.N.Y.) in Farrakhan v. Anti-Defamation League:
The challenged statements referring to Farrakhan as antisemitic are non-actionable statements of opinion. The communications in which they were published contain "a recitation of the facts on which [they are] based"—namely, direct quotes from Farrakhan. Thus, the statements calling Farrakhan antisemitic cannot be "reasonably understood as implying the assertion of undisclosed facts justifying the opinion.".
The challenged ADL blog post title ("Farrakhan Predicts Another Holocaust") appears at first blush to be a statement "capable of being proven true or false," but "the full context of the communication in which the statement appears [and] the broader social context and surrounding circumstances are such as to signal" to readers that what is being read "is likely to be opinion, not fact." The full title of the post, and its lede, indicate that its subject is the Savior's Day speech. The post contains direct quotes from that speech {such as "[t]he Synagogue of Satan has destroyed the country"}, including one that could be fairly interpreted as a reference to the Holocaust. [The relevant quote is this: {A Jewish man said to me, 'You know, we say never again. Never again will we be in the oven. Never again.' I said, 'Hold it.' You can say that to men, but you can't say that to God. Because the Bible says, behold the day cometh that shall burn—as a what?—as an oven.}] The full context of the communication indicates that its title is an interpretation of the facts disclosed within the article. The same is true for the statement in the SWC article that Farrakhan "invoked the New Testament's 'Synagogue of Satan' to demonize Judaism." …
