A US judge has thrown out a teenager's lawsuit that had accused a newspaper of falsely calling him a racist. Nicholas Sandmann had been criticised by many people following an encounter with Native American Nathan Phillips at a protest in Washington DC in January.
Video and photos showed Mr Sandmann and his classmates from Kentucky's Covington Catholic High School wearing Make America Great Again hats, a key slogan of US president Donald Trump.
Mr Sandmann, then 16, became the focus of outrage after he and Mr Phillips were filmed standing very close to each other, with the teenager staring and at times apparently smirking at the Native American man as he sang and played a drum.
The Covington students were initially accused of initiating the confrontation with Mr Phillips, but other videos showed that both sides were verbally abused by a third group calling themselves the Black Hebrew Israelites.
Both Mr Sandmann and Mr Phillips said they were trying to calm the situation but it was the actions of Mr Sandmann and his classmates that came in for the most criticism, with some saying they were mocking the elder.
Mr Sandmann sued the Washington Post for $250m (£200m) in February, saying it had "targeted and bullied" him, engaging in modern "McCarthyism".
His lawyers had also threatened to sue other news organisations over their coverage and even Mr Trump got involved, egging the teenager on with a tweet that said: "Go get them Nick, fake news!".
Their complaint had accused the Post of saying the teenager "engaged in acts of racism by 'swarming' Phillips, 'blocking' his exit away from the students, and otherwise engaging in racist misconduct".
"The Post ignored basic journalist standards because it wanted to advance its well-known and easily documented, biased agenda against President Donald J Trump," it said.
But federal judge William O Bertelsman said that any opinions were protected by the First Amendment.
He wrote: "Few principles of law are as well-established as the rule that statements of opinion are not actionable in libel actions".
The judge said he accepted Mr Sandmann's assertion that he had been "standing motionless in the confrontation" but added that Mr Phillips had said he was being prevented from getting past and his opinion had been reported by the newspaper.
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