Those are both decisions regarding preliminary injunctions, so your claim that they were found "not illegal" is erroneous. It's explained pretty clearly in the short paragraphs you linked to.
If the legality of a case like this is also supposed as a proxy for the (universal) morality of the verdict and the arguments Thiel likes to make about Gawker's journalistic sins it certainly seems like a federal suit would have been a more appropriate arena for proving the point.