No Stay in Trump's Personal Defamation Lawsuit Against Pulitzer Prize Board Members

First, the backstory of the lawsuit itself, from an earlier decision in Alexander v. Trump, decided today by Florida Court of Appeal Justices Jeffrey Kuntz, Burton Conner, and Ed Artau:

President Donald J. Trump, a Florida resident, sued nineteen individual members of the Pulitzer Prize Board, an unincorporated association, for defamation and conspiracy. Trump alleged that he sent letters on his personal letterhead to members of the Pulitzer Prize Board. The letters demanded the Pulitzer Prize Board take action to strip The Washington Post and The New York Times of the Pulitzer Prize awarded in 2018 for articles on purported Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and alleged connections to Trump.

After Trump sent the letters, the Pulitzer Prize Board met remotely and concluded "no passage or headlines, contentions or assertions in any of the winning submissions were discredited by facts that emerged subsequent to the conferral of the prizes." The Board then issued the following statement on its website, with links to the original articles:

A Statement from the Pulitzer Prize Board

The Pulitzer Prize Board has an established, formal process by which complaints against winning entries are carefully reviewed. In the last three years, the Pulitzer Board has received inquiries, including from former President Donald Trump, about submissions from The New York Times and The Washington Post on Russian interference in the U.S. election and its connections to the Trump campaign--submissions that jointly won the 2018 National Reporting prize.

These inquiries prompted the Pulitzer Board to commission two independent reviews of the work submitted by those organizations to our National Reporting competition. Both reviews were conducted by individuals with no connection to the institutions whose work was under examination, nor any connection to each other. The separate reviews converged in their conclusions: that no passages or headlines, contentions or assertions in any of the winning submissions were discredited by facts that emerged subsequent to the conferral of the prizes.

The 2018 Pulitzer Prizes in National Reporting stand.

Now, from yesterday's Florida Court of Appeal opinion in Alexander v. Trump, written by Chief Judge Mark Klingensmith and joined by Judges Martha Warner and Melanie May:

Petitioners assert they are entitled to a stay of the underlying proceedings, including discovery, because the Plaintiff-Respondent is the current President of the United States. They argue a stay of the case will avoid the constitutional conflicts arising from allowing Respondent to proceed as a plaintiff in a state court civil action on claims that may involve his official conduct as the President….

Petitioners argue the trial court's order denying their request to stay the proceedings invites an unavoidable constitutional collision between the trial court's exercise of "[t]he judicial power" under Article V of the Florida Constitution and Respondent's exercise of "[t]he executive Power" under Article II, as well as the Supremacy Clause. Petitioners further argue allowing this matter to proceed while Respondent is in office will interfere with his official duties and responsibilities under the Constitution.

Petitioners effectively ask that the court invoke a temporary immunity under the Supremacy Clause on Respondent's behalf to stay this civil proceeding, even though Respondent has not sought such relief. They further allege that it would violate due process to allow Respondent to claim constitutional entitlement to stay cases because of his office but not allow them the same ability. Article II, section 1, clause 1 of the United States Constitution, also known as the Vesting Clause, provides that "[t]he executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America." The United States Supreme Court has held that the powers and immunities granted under Article II, in addition to other privileges, belong to the President and can be asserted by him. That privilege, like others, "relates to the effective discharge of a President's powers," and is "fundamental to the operation of Government and inextricably rooted in the separation of powers under the Constitution." But such privileges are afforded to the President alone, not to his litigation adversaries.

Such privileges are not unique to the presidency. Other public officials enjoy similar protections as well. See § 11.111, Fla. Stat. (2024) (providing for the continuance of court proceedings during any session of the Legislature when a member of the Legislature is a party, witness, or attorney representing one of the litigants in the case)…. Likewise, a narrow immunity is given to Members of Congress found in the Speech or Debate Clause, Article I, Section 6, Clause 1, of the United States Constitution, but by its express terms, such immunity does not apply to non-officeholders…. [But w]hile government officials may claim the immunities and protections provided to them in court proceedings, the law is clear that such privileges are not available to third parties to claim, nor may such privileges be asserted by others on the officials' behalf. The principle of standing says that, generally, one cannot assert someone else's constitutional rights. Immunities and privileges, by their very nature, inure solely to the benefit of the individual for whom they are intended. Thus, application of a governmental immunity cannot be asserted by the Petitioners as private citizens….

For their claim of entitlement to a stay of the underlying proceedings, Petitioners rely primarily on Clinton v. Jones, 520 U.S. 681 (1997), and Zervos v. Trump, 94 N.Y.S.3d 75 (N.Y. App. Div. 2019). Petitioners also reference the President's arguments in another case pending against him in a Delaware state court, where he has requested a stay of the proceedings based on his status as a sitting President. See Defendant's Motion to Dismiss, or Alternatively, to Stay on the Basis of Temporary Presidential Immunity, United Atlantic Ventures, LLC v. TMTG Sub Inc., No. 2024-0184- MTZ (Del. Ch. Jan. 24, 2025). However, reliance on those cases is misplaced.

Both Jones and Zervos involved requests by President Clinton and President Trump, respectively, for stays in litigation when each was a party defendant. But in both cases, the courts found that although the President was certainly entitled to ask for a pause in the underlying legal proceedings, he was not necessarily entitled to one as a matter of law….

Petitioners also rely on Zervos and United Atlantic to assert that Respondent is estopped from objecting to their request to pause this case because of legal arguments made on his behalf seeking stays in other courts. These cases are not substantially similar to the one at bar to estop Respondent from objecting to a stay. By trying to draw parallels to those cases, Petitioners conflate situations where the President is a defendant in an action, in contrast to this case, where the President is the plaintiff. Because those cases involve situations where a President was the defendant on claims brought against him, and not a plaintiff pursuing claims initiated by him, those cases are inapposite.

Petitioners correctly point out that whenever a President is sued in state court in his individual capacity, and attempts are made to institute compulsory process over him, the risk of distractions to his public duties in dealing with such lawsuits creates an inherent risk to the effective functioning of government. Such lawsuits subject a President not only to potential harassment, but also risk diverting him from his official duties which are of "unrivaled gravity and breadth." That is not in dispute.

However, this is not a case where the state court is asserting jurisdiction over Respondent without his consent. Quite the contrary. Here, Respondent is a willing participant in the underlying proceedings and has thus far declined to assert a privilege to cease this action. Even though litigants may be entitled to claim a privilege, they may also voluntarily elect not to….

When the President is a willing participant, courts do not risk improperly interfering with the essential functioning of government. The President—by virtue of his exceptional position—is uniquely equipped to determine how to use his time, to assess the attention a lawsuit will require, and to decide whether the lawsuit will divert him from his official business. When an officeholder chooses to initiate litigation, courts must assume the officeholder already has weighed the burdens on their official duties. Although Petitioners raise several claims about how this case will negatively impact Respondent's ability to perform his duties as President, the trial court correctly observed that the filing of any request for a stay or other relief from court orders in the underlying proceedings because of his role as the nation's Chief Executive would be solely in his prerogative:

Should the duties of the President interfere with his ability to perform his obligations in this action, he is certainly entitled to seek the appropriate relief. Should he not do so, yet not comply with the rules of this court, defendants may apply for the appropriate sanctions as they would against any other plaintiff. These could be the usual sanctions of fines, costs, attorney's fees, and the ultimate sanction of dismissal of the action should that be appropriate. Defendants would not be precluded from seeking another stay of the proceeding if plaintiff fails to perform his obligations under Florida law and the [R]ules of [C]ivil [P]rocedure….

Timothy W. Weber, Jeremy D. Bailie, and R. Quincy Bird (Weber, Crabb & Wein, P.A.) represent Trump.