Trump NYT Libel Judge Crossed Biden on Vaccines, Cruise Ship Ban

The judge handling Donald Trump’s defamation lawsuit against the New York Times ruled against the Biden administration’s cruise-ship restrictions during the pandemic and for military members seeking religious exemptions from Covid vaccine mandates.

US District Judge Steven Merryday, an appointee of former President George H.W. Bush, has also ruled in favor of Trump Media & Technology Group Corp. in civil litigation in Tampa.

Merryday, 74, will oversee Trump’s defamation lawsuit against the Times and several of its reporters, which accuses them of libeling him in articles before the 2024 presidential election. The judge must weigh not only whether the reporting was false and defamatory, but also if it was printed with reckless disregard for the truth. Trump also sued a book publisher.

Hot-button cases are not new for Merryday, a 33-year veteran of the bench who has issued several rulings that sought to reel in the regulatory authority of the US government. In 2021, he boosted Florida’s cruise-ship industry by barring the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from enforcing its “conditional sailing order” at ports in Florida. Merryday ruled the agency overreached in trying to block Covid transmissions.

“The expansive breadth of authority asserted by the conditional sailing order to microscopically regulate a multi-billion dollar industry is breathtaking,” Merryday wrote in a 124-page ruling. He said the CDC’s assertion that it could reduce infections to zero was an unprecedented and “singularly authoritarian claim.”

Merryday said Florida’s lawsuit, backed by Governor Ron DeSantis, established an “imminent and irreparable financial injury” to the industry. He said that the CDC’s rules should be regarded as non-binding recommendations.

A year later, Merryday granted an injunction to protect US Marines from a mandatory Covid vaccine order. He ruled in favor of 3,733 Marines who sought “accommodations” under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. He cited, for example, how both Christians and Muslims objected that the Covid vaccine was “developed from cell lines derived from electively aborted fetuses,” according to his opinion.

“Neither the military nor the judiciary can judge the validity of a religious objection (unless the objection is irrational, delusional, or the like) — but can judge only the sincerity of the belief,” Merryday wrote.

In the Trump Media case, Merryday ruled last year that the company may pursue its claims in state court against the people and entities involved in the merger that created it. Trump owns nearly 115 million of shares in Trump Media, worth about $2 billion.

One of the odder cases handled by Merryday, from almost 15 years ago, touched on the same legal doctrine as Trump’s claim that the Times has smeared his reputation. Merryday ruled in 2011 that a Chinese doctor of anatomy who was a human rights activist had to face a defamation lawsuit by a company that had preserved corpses and body parts displayed in a touring exhibition after he publicly alleged that the specimens were executed Chinese prisoners. The case settled a few months later.

Merryday grew up in a small Florida town, Palatka. He attended St. John’s Community College for two years before earning a scholarship to the University of Florida and becoming a Rhodes scholar finalist, according to a 1991 profile in the Tampa Bay Times. He graduated from the university’s law school, where he was student body president.

During summers in law school, he was a journeyman pipe fitter, working on nuclear plants and potato chip factories, according to the paper.

“I couldn’t have afforded to buy the suit to go to work” in a prestigious law firm, he told the paper.

After law school, he worked primarily as a civil litigator in Tampa for the next 17 years until his appointment by Bush. He began serving in 1992 in the Middle District of Florida, which includes Tampa, Jacksonville and Orlando.

He served as chief judge of the district from 2015 to 2020. He went on senior status on Aug. 31, meaning he is semi-retired and will hear a reduced number of cases.

Merryday has sprinkled humor through some of his opinions, including in a murder-for-hire case in 2012. In that case, the defendant’s lawyer asked for a delay in the trial because he was scheduled to appear as a contestant in an Ernest Hemingway look-alike contest at Sloppy Joe’s Bar in Key West, Florida. The lawyer had reserved a block of six non-refundable rooms for the event.

The judge seemed to admire the lawyer’s hubris but was unpersuaded.

“Between a murder-for-hire trial and an annual look-alike contest, surely Hemingway, a perfervid admirer of ‘grace under pressure, would choose the trial,” Merryday wrote.

“Perhaps a lawyer who evokes Hemingway can resist relaxing frolic in favor of solemn duty. Or, at least, ‘Isn’t it pretty to think so?’,” he wrote, citing the last line of Hemingway’s classic novel, The Sun Also Rises. “Best of luck to counsel in next year’s contest. The motion is DENIED.”

To contact the reporter on this story:
David Voreacos in New York at dvoreacos@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Misyrlena Egkolfopoulou at megkolfopoul@bloomberg.net

Peter Blumberg, Anthony Aarons

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