National Review and the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), a Washington-based libertarian think tank, asked the justices to reverse a 2016 District of Columbia court ruling, which permitted Penn State professor and climatologist Michael Mann's defamation lawsuit to continue. In 2012, Mann sued National Review and CEI and after conservative columnist Mark Steyn and Rand Simberg penned works referring to Mann as the "Jerry Sandusky of climate science."

"Mann could be said to be the Jerry Sandusky of climate science, except for instead of molesting children, he has molested and tortured data in service of politicized science that could have dire consequences for the nation and planet," Simberg wrote for CEI in 2012 before the think tank removed the reference, deeming it as "inappropriate."

Steyn followed up Simberg's piece with his own column in which he wrote that Simberg "has a point," and called Mann's work "fraudulent," characterizing him as "the very ringmaster of the tree-ring circus."