The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday left undisturbed a District of Columbia appeals court ruling that said the conservative media publication National Review could face a defamation claim over a column that raised questions about climate scientist Michael Mann of Penn State University.

Justice Samuel Alito Jr. wrote a lone dissent, saying the petition, filed by Michael Carvin of Jones Day, "presents questions that go to the very heart of the constitutional guarantee of freedom of speech and freedom of the press: the protection afforded to journalists and others who use harsh language in criticizing opposing advocacy on one of the most important public issues of the day."

Alito wrote in his eight-page dissent: "Climate change has staked a place at the very center of this Nation's public discourse. Politicians, journalists, academics, and ordinary Americans discuss and debate various aspects of climate change daily—its causes, extent, urgency, consequences, and the appropriate policies for addressing it. The core purpose of the constitutional protection of freedom of expression is to ensure that all opinions on such issues have a chance to be heard and considered."

Alito did not go so far as to say the speech in the National Review column "is or is not entitled to First Amendment protection." Mann's case will now be allowed to proceed in the lower courts, and any verdict could return to the Supreme Court for further review.

"But the standard to be applied in a case like this is immensely important," Alito wrote. "Political debate frequently involves claims and counterclaims about the validity of academic studies, and today it is something of an understatement to say that our public discourse is often 'uninhibited, robust, and wide-open.'"

Columnists Rand Simberg and Mark Steyn criticized Mann's "hockey stick" graph showing a slight dip in temperatures between 1050 and 1900 followed by a sharp rise over the last century. They also criticized a Penn State University investigation into wrongdoing by Mann. The two columnists used language such as "misconduct," "manipulation" and "torture" of data in blog posts hosted by National Review Online and the Competitive Enterprise Institute. The institute, represented by Andrew Grossman of Baker & Hostetler, had filed a separate petition for review, which also was denied Monday.

Mike Carvin Michael Carvin after arguing for the plaintiffs in King v. Burwell. March 4, 2015. (Photo: Diego M. Radzinschi / ALM)

Carvin said in his petition that the D.C. Court of Appeals ruling, left to stand, will invite defamation claims on "hot-button political and scientific" disputes.

"For every National Review post that calls one side misleading, there is a Slate column that calls the other side liars. For every Wall Street Journal editorial that calls a liberal a hypocrite, there is a New York Times editorial that calls a conservative a bigot," Carvin wrote. "For every Republican who says that Hillary Clinton committed wrongdoing respecting her emails, there is a Democrat who says that Donald Trump committed misconduct with Russia."

The petition raised two questions: whether a court or jury must decide if a factual connotation is "provably false" and whether the First Amendment permits defamation liability for subjective opinions about a matter of scientific to political controversy. Alito, who wrote that the second question might be "even more important" than the first, said the lower courts had split in answering those questions.

Mann was represented by a team from Cozen O'Connor and the Washington firm Williams Lopatto. John Williams of Williams Lopatto was counsel of record for Mann.

The D.C. Court of Appeals, Mann's lawyers told the justices, "did not abdicate its responsibility to determine whether the defamatory statements were verifiable. To the contrary, it made its own determination (noted eight times in the decision) that the allegations of data manipulation, academic fraud, and scientific fraud were capable of being determined true or false by the jury."

Alito's dissent in National Review v. Mann is posted below:

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