The New York Times on Tuesday petitioned the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for an en banc rehearing of a panel decision to revive Sarah Palin’s defamation suit, which targets the paper over a since-corrected editorial that linked her political action committee to a 2011 mass shooting that left a former congresswoman seriously injured.

Attorneys for the Times argued the Aug. 6 opinion from a three-judge Second Circuit panel “misapprehended two bedrock First Amendment principles” concerning allegations of actual malice and protected statements of opinion and said that, if not corrected, the opinion would have the effect of dampening political debate.

The filing argued that the panel incorrectly premised its decision on a finding of recklessness on the part of the editorial’s author and allegations that the misstatements were motivated by political animus. The panel, the Times’ lawyers said, also employed the wrong constitutional standard for deciding whether Palin’s claims covered non-actionable expressions of opinion.