Judge tosses Covington Catholic student's defamation lawsuit against Washington Post A federal judge in Kentucky dismissed a defamation lawsuit filed against the Washington Post by a Covington Catholic High School student. Nicholas Sandmann and his family sought $250 million in damages over the newspaper’s reporting about a confrontation between Sandmann and a Native American man in January. A video rapidly spread online that showed Sandmann, 16 at the time, wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat and standing face to face with the Native American man, Nathan Phillips. Sandmann, who was in Washington, D.C., with his peers for the anti-abortion March for Life event, was widely pegged as an instigator of a confrontation with Phillips. But videos that surfaced later showed the students were verbally harassed by a group of black street preachers who also taunted a group of Native Americans, and Phillips was the one who walked in between them while beating a drum. The lawsuit alleged the Washington Post smeared the high school student in its “war against the president” and accused Sandmann of being a racist. U.S. District Judge William Bertelsman said in his ruling Friday that the newspaper never named Sandmann in its initial reporting, instead writing that “hat wearing teens” were involved in the incident, nor did it publish any photo of him. Bertelsman said the words used do not identify any particular individual and therefore are not defamation. more