I see no such thing in the article you linked to. All that ruling says is that a defendant is not liable for defamation against a public official strictly the basis that what was published was false and caused injury to a person.

However, the ruling explicitly states that if the publication knew that the information was false or disregarded whether it was true, then a defendant would be liable for damages.

That seems completely reasonable and in no way suggests that anyone has a license to lie.

The standard to sue journalists for libel is really high. Recently. Lin Wood successfully did it for the Covington kids though. It helped that the kids were not politicians. https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/07/24/covington-teen...

You're right regarding the court's decision, my apologies. Yet the NYT did choose to go to court instead of publishing a retraction of what they then knew to be false:

Sullivan sent such a [retraction] request. The Times did not publish a retraction in response to the demand.

I am not an expert in this, but from the source you provided the NYT did publish a retraction of the advertisement.

Your post makes it seem like the NYT knowingly published false information about someone and refused to retract it, as if the NYT believed that they had the right to publish lies about someone.

Your source, however, paints a very different and much more nuanced picture. The NYT published an advertisement paid for by an independent organization, the ad contained false information, the NYT did retract the ad, the police commissioner, Sullivan, who is unnamed in the ad but potentially implicated by it sued the NYT for defamation, a court case was fought over whether the ad actually implicated him or not, the Alabama courts decided that the ad did implicate Sullivan and awarded Sullivan damages, the NYT appealed the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court and they overturned the Alabama's Supreme Court decision on the basis that Sullivan being implicated by the ad is not sufficient to award damages for defamation.

At no point did the NYT try to justify lying or claim that they have a license to lie. What the NYT's argued was that Sullivan had no grounds to sue because he was not implicated by the ad.

This ruling is a good thing. It lets me say thing like "politician ____ is stealing from the public" without having to worry about whether or not I'll be sued for everything I've got because technically earmarking funds or receiving kickbacks isn't stealing. Hell, I'm even allowed to be wrong about it.