A scary court victory for Devin Nunes

First Amendment lawyers scoffed at the ruling. “Until now, the courts have been unanimous that hyperlinks, retweets, and other references to allegedly defamatory articles are not ‘republications.’ The Eighth Circuit departs from this consensus without much, if any, explanation why,” writes Jeffrey Pyle of Prince Lobel Tye LLP in an email. What’s more, says Pyle, the court’s timeline analysis ignores the principle that “[c]ourts judge reckless disregard for the truth at the time of publication.”