Judge defers dismissal in Trump's $15B NYT defamation case

Last verified: Aug. 4, 2026, UTC. Legal-information record only; not legal advice. Case checked as Trump v. New York Times Company, No. 8:25-cv-02487, in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, Tampa Division, before Senior U.S. District Judge Steven D. Merryday. The operative July 27, 2026 order is Doc. 94. It does not decide the New York Times defendants’ dismissal arguments on the merits. It defers adjudication of the Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss and grants Donald J. Trump leave to amend. The amended complaint is due Aug. 27, 2026; the Times’ response is due within 21 days after that amended complaint is filed.[1]

That is the status. The $15 billion figure remains part of the case’s public identity, but it is not what Judge Merryday adjudicated on July 27. The court did not hold that the challenged Times reporting was false. It did not hold that actual malice was plausibly pleaded. It did not decide whether the challenged statements are protected opinion. It did not deny dismissal on the merits. The order kept the pleading machinery moving by allowing another complaint and postponing the dismissal decision.[1]

What the July 27 order actually did

Doc. 94 has two operative verbs that matter for anyone briefing the ruling: the dismissal motion was deferred, and amendment was allowed. The Times defendants had a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss pending. Trump had moved for leave to amend. Judge Merryday granted leave to amend and put off adjudicating the dismissal motion until after the amended pleading is filed and answered or otherwise challenged.[1]

Secondary reports described the same procedural result: the judge did not toss the case on July 27, but required or allowed the complaint to be amended before the dismissal arguments are resolved.[2][3] That is not the same thing as saying the defamation claim “survived” a merits test. In motion-practice terms, a claim survives when the court measures the pleaded allegations against the governing standard and denies dismissal. Here, the court deferred that measurement.

The distinction is small enough to disappear in a headline and large enough to matter in a court filing. A deferred motion remains undecided. A granted amendment motion changes what pleading the court will eventually examine. Until the amended complaint is filed, the court has not chosen the version of the allegations on which the Rule 12(b)(6) question will be tested.

What remains undecided

The unresolved issues are the ones that would matter most in a defamation dismissal ruling. The July 27 order does not decide whether the amended or prior allegations plausibly plead falsity. It does not decide whether Trump has pleaded facts supporting actual malice. It does not decide whether any challenged statements are nonactionable opinion. It does not decide whether the claims are legally sufficient under Rule 12(b)(6).[1]

That also means the damages demand has not been tested. The suit has been widely described as seeking $15 billion plus punitive damages, and that demand has driven much of the coverage.[2] But the demand is still attached to a pleading posture, not to a judicial finding that the case may proceed past dismissal on any particular theory.

A careful status note should therefore avoid both overstatements: the case was not dismissed on July 27, and the claims were not upheld on July 27. The ruling leaves the parties exactly where pleading practice often leaves them after leave to amend: with a new complaint due, a response clock to follow, and the merits of dismissal still waiting.

How the docket got to Doc. 94

The path to the July 27 order is not a political chronology. It is a pleading chronology.

Trump filed the original complaint on Sept. 15, 2025. The docket identifies the case as a diversity action involving libel and slander, with a jury demand.[4] Four days later, Judge Merryday struck the complaint under Rule 8(a), finding that it was not a “short and plain statement” of the claim.[5] Reuters reported the same day that the judge had struck the lawsuit over the form and content of the complaint, not because he had reached the ultimate defamation merits.[6]

The amended complaint followed on Oct. 16, 2025. The Guardian reported that the revised filing was 40 pages, dropped reporter Michael S. Schmidt as a defendant, and continued to name The New York Times Company, Peter Baker, Susanne Craig, Russ Buettner, and Penguin Random House, while again seeking $15 billion in compensatory damages plus punitive damages.[7]

The defendants then moved to dismiss in December 2025. Before the July 27 order, Judge Merryday also denied a venue-transfer motion on July 6, 2026.[8] Oral argument on the Rule 12(b)(6) dismissal motion took place on July 22, 2026, five days before the court entered Doc. 94.[9]

That sequence matters because it keeps the July 27 ruling in its lane. The Sept. 19, 2025 Rule 8 order was the earlier pleading-form strike. The July 27, 2026 order is the later deferral-and-amendment order. They are related steps in the same docket, but they are not the same ruling.

Party characterizations are not the procedural holding

After the July 27 order, Trump characterized the result on Truth Social as a victory, according to secondary reporting.[2][3] That is a party characterization. It is not the operative language of the order.

The Times’ side framed the ruling differently. Forbes and TheWrap reported a statement from Times spokesperson Charlie Stadtlander saying the order gave the president “yet another chance to draft a complaint that demonstrates any legal merit.”[2][3] That, too, is advocacy-adjacent characterization, useful for understanding the parties’ public positions but not a substitute for the docket entry.

The Times has also publicly described the lawsuit as an attempt to stifle independent reporting.[10] NPR reported the Times’ position in similar terms after the suit was filed.[11] Those statements may matter for public framing. They do not change what Doc. 94 did: it allowed amendment and deferred the dismissal ruling.

Avoiding two common docket mistakes

First, the RECAP number embedded in CourtListener file URLs is not the case number. The case number is No. 8:25-cv-02487, with docket text also reflecting the caption style 8:25-cv-2487-SDM-NHA. The internal number appearing inside storage links is a database identifier, not something to cite as the civil action number.

Second, this case should not be blended with Trump’s earlier disputes involving the Times. Prior Trump-NYT suits have their own dockets, rulings, parties, and procedural histories. They do not supply a merits ruling in this 2025 Florida action.

For present purposes, the safe citation is narrower and more useful: in Trump v. New York Times Company, No. 8:25-cv-02487, Judge Merryday’s July 27, 2026 Doc. 94 deferred the pending Rule 12(b)(6) dismissal motion and granted leave to amend, with the amended complaint due Aug. 27, 2026 and the Times’ response due within 21 days thereafter.[1]

The binding next step

As of Q3 2026, the case remains alive only in the procedural sense that amendment was allowed and dismissal was deferred. The next operative filing is Trump’s amended complaint, due Aug. 27, 2026. The Times’ response clock runs from that amended complaint and expires 21 days later unless the court changes the schedule.[1]

References

1. ORDER, Trump v. New York Times Company, No. 8:25-cv-02487, Doc. 94, CourtListener, July 27, 2026, link
2. Judge Doesn’t Toss Trump’s $15 Billion New York Times Lawsuit—But It Must Be Amended, Forbes, July 27, 2026, link
3. Judge Declines to Dismiss Trump $15 Billion Suit Against New York Times, TheWrap, link
4. COMPLAINT, Trump v. New York Times Company, No. 8:25-cv-02487, Doc. 1, CourtListener, Sept. 15, 2025, link
5. ORDER, Trump v. New York Times Company, No. 8:25-cv-02487, Doc. 5, CourtListener, Sept. 19, 2025, link
6. Judge strikes Trump's lawsuit against New York Times over its content, Reuters, Sept. 19, 2025, link
7. Trump files amended New York Times defamation complaint, The Guardian, Oct. 16, 2025, link
8. ORDER, Trump v. New York Times Company, No. 8:25-cv-02487, Doc. 88, CourtListener, July 6, 2026, link
9. Judge Lets Trump Amend and Refile $15 Billion New York Times Defamation Lawsuit, NOTUS, link
10. The New York Times Responds to Lawsuit Filed by President Donald Trump, The New York Times Company, link
11. Donald Trump sues New York Times for $15 billion, NPR, Sept. 16, 2025, link