SCOTUS - Air Wisconsin v. Hoeper and statutory defamation immunity for airline security

Majority opinion by Sotomayor, incorporating NYT v. Sullivan standard into statute:

To ensure that the TSA would be informed of potential threats, Congress gave airlines and their employees immunity against civil liability for reporting suspicious behavior. §44941(a). But this immunity does not attach to “any disclosure made with actual knowledge that the disclosure was false, inaccurate,or misleading” or “any disclosure made with reckless disregard as to the truth or falsity of that disclosure.”§44941(b).
The question before us is whether ATSA immunity may be denied under §44941(b) without a determination that a disclosure was materially false. We hold that it may not. Because the state courts made no such determination, and because any falsehood in the disclosure here would not have affected a reasonable security officer’s assessment of the supposed threat, we reverse the judgment of the Colorado Supreme Court.

From the dissent (Scalia, Thomas, Kagan, who would remand for application of ruling to facts):

In short, a jury could find that Hoeper did nothing more than engage in a brief, run-of-the-mill, and arguably justified display of anger that included raising his voice and swearing, but that did not cause anyone, including the person on the receiving end of the outburst, to view him as either irrational or a potential source of violence. Viewingthe facts in that light, I cannot agree with the Court that a reasonable TSA official would not “consider . . . important,” ante, at 13, the difference between an individual who engaged in this sort of heated but commonplace display of anger, on the one hand, and on the other, an individual whose colleagues regard him as “mentally unstable.”