WILMINGTON, Delaware (AP) — Jurors are set to get their first look Tuesday at a voting machine company’s $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News in a trial that will test First Amendment protections and expose the network’s role in spreading the lie of a stolen 2020 presidential election.

The trial began with the judge conferring with attorneys on both sides after he granted a one-day delay that offered time to see if they could work out a settlement.

Jury selection and opening statements had been scheduled for Monday in Dominion Voting Systems’ lawsuit. The Denver-based company aims to hold Fox accountable for airing false allegations of election fraud that continue to roil US politics.

Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis gave no explanation for the brief delay. But he suggested the companies try to mediate their dispute, according to a person close to Fox who was not authorised to speak publicly about the lawsuit’s status and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The case will put under scrutiny the libel standard that has guided US media outlets for nearly six decades, reveal behind-the-scenes activity at Fox News in the weeks after the 2020 election and shed light on the flow of misinformation that turned into a tidal wave after the election, which then-President Donald Trump lost to Joe Biden.

Fox News stars such as Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity, as well as company founder Rupert Murdoch, are expected to testify during the six-week trial, but it’s unclear whether any witnesses would be called Tuesday.

Dominion claims New York-based Fox News and its parent company, Fox Corp., essentially bulldozed the voting company’s business and subjected employees to threats by falsely implicating it in a bogus conspiracy to rig the election against Trump.

In the weeks after Election Day, prominent Fox News hosts brought on Trump allies who falsely claimed that Dominion’s machines were programmed to snatch votes away from the Republican incumbent and pad the Democratic challenger’s total.

Many of Fox’s hosts and executives didn’t believe the claims but allowed them to be aired nevertheless.

“Fox spread and endorsed one of the most damaging lies in this country’s history,” Dominion’s lawyers wrote in a court filing.

Pointing to communications among Fox figures, from executives to fact-checkers, Dominion argues that the network knowingly amplified falsehoods for the sake of ratings.

Fox says it simply reported on Trump’s challenges to the election results and let viewers hear from his lawyers and allies.

“Dominion’s lawsuit is a political crusade in search of a financial windfall, but the real cost would be cherished First Amendment rights,” the network said in a statement last week.

Fox said its hosts sometimes alluded to a need for evidence to back up the allegations and noted that Dominion denied the claims.

Federal and state election officials, exhaustive reviews in battleground states and Trump’s own attorney general found no widespread fraud that could have changed the election outcome. Nor did they turn up any credible evidence that the vote was tainted.

Dozens of courts, some with Trump-appointed judges, also rejected his fraud allegations. In the Dominion case, Davis declared it was “CRYSTAL clear” that the claims about the voting machine company weren’t true.

A key question for the jury is whether Fox News acted with “actual malice,” a legal standard that applies when public figures sue news outlets for defamation. The standard, derived from a 1964 Supreme Court case, means knowingly publishing or airing something false or operating with “reckless disregard” for whether it’s true.