On Thursday, December 16, a court refused Fox News’ request to dismiss a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems over concerns about the 2020 presidential election.

According to the fifty-two-page judgment by Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis, the voting system manufacturer has demonstrated that “at this time, it is quite probable that Dominion has a claim for defamation per se.”

Denver-based Dominion filed a case against Fox News earlier this year, alleging that certain Fox News employees falsely claimed Dominion had tampered with 2020 election votes using algorithms designed in Venezuela to rig elections for late tyrant Hugo Chavez.

According to the Associated Press,  Trump’s attorney general William Barr, said there was no evidence of widespread election fraud in 2020 was found.

In the six crucial states disputed by former President Donald Trump, an Associated Press study found just 475 suspected incidences of vote fraud, a number that would have made no difference in the 2020 presidential election.

In declining to dismiss the action, Davis stated that Dominion’s complaint “supports the reasonable inference that Fox either knew or had a high degree of comprehension that its representations claiming Dominion’s cooperation in election fraud were false.”

“Fox received contradictory evidence of election fraud from the Department of Justice, electoral experts, and Dominion at the time it was making its assertions,” Davis said. “Despite this evidence, Fox proceeded to broadcast its claims against Dominion, implying that Fox knew they were inaccurate.”

Despite Dominion’s emails attempting to refute Fox’s fraud allegations, the court found that Fox and its news staff continued to cover Dominion’s “alleged relationship to the electoral fraud accusations without also reporting on Dominion’s correspondence.”

“Given Fox’s evident unwillingness to broadcast opposing evidence, the allegations in the Complaint support the reasonable conclusion that Fox wished to keep Dominion’s side of the story out of the narrative,” Davis said.

Fox News Media released a statement in its defense, saying, “As we have maintained, Fox News, along with every single news organization across the country, vigorously covered the breaking news surrounding the unprecedented 2020 election, providing full context of every story with in-depth reporting and clear-cut analysis. We will continue to oppose this pointless lawsuit and its full-fledged First Amendment assault.”

Fox News had filed for a dismissal of the case, arguing that the First Amendment protects its news coverage and that a free press must be able to convey both sides of a story, including charges that strike at the core of democracy.