The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has slapped the New York Times by reviving a defamation lawsuit filed against it by a Louisiana economics professor and libertarian who sued the newspaper for defamation after he was quoted in an article stating that slavery was “not so bad.”

The decision reverses a lower court ruling dismissing the case filed against the NYT after the paper defended itself using Louisiana's anti-SLAPP statute, which allows courts to dismiss defamation suits against defendants who speak out on free speech issues.

In Block v. New York Times , Walter Block, an economics professor at Loyola University and an adjunct scholar at the Mises Institute, sued the newspaper alleging it mispresented his statements in an article that attributed racist views to libertarian scholars and discussed how ties with libertarian thinkers would impact libertarian U.S. Sen. Rand Paul's potential presidential candidacy.