Satire site The Onion files free speech brief with US Supreme Court
The satire site will fight for its right to make light of the day’s affairs by taking its mission to the US supreme court, with a brief defending a man’s right to parody his local police force on social media.
The Onion’s business model could be at risk
The Onion has filed a brief with the US Supreme Court, drawing attention to the case of a man from Ohio arrested for creating a parody Facebook page of his local police force.
USA Today reports that he did so while bored waiting on a bus. After six posts and 12 hours, the page was taken down when police announced on TV they were investigating it. The house of Anthony Novak, the man behind the page, was raided one full month later. He was arrested under a state-wide hacking statute, with the claim he committed a felony by using a computer to disrupt police operations. The ‘disruption’ in question referred to 11 calls that the police had received reporting the page.
After a full criminal trial, Novak was found not guilty. Novak responded by suing the police force in question, which was afforded qualified immunity in place to protect government workers from constitutional liability.
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The brief from The Onion features arguments including: Parody Functions By Tricking People Into Thinking That It Is Real; Because Parody Mimics “The Real Thing,” It Has The Unique Capacity To Critique The Real Thing; A Reasonable Reader Does Not Need A Disclaimer To Know That Parody Is Parody; and It Should Be Obvious That Parodists Cannot Be Prosecuted.
The brief, which was characteristically funny, spoke up for the brand: “The Onion’s journalists have garnered a sterling reputation for accurately forecasting future events. One such coup was The Onion’s scoop revealing that a former president kept nuclear secrets strewn around his beach home’s basement three years before it even happened.”
The publication admitted that the case threatens its business model, and argued it should be able to mock the US government, as it does many regimes around the world.
Finally, it added: “The court’s decision suggests that parodists are in the clear only if they pop the balloon in advance by warning their audience that their parody is not true. But some forms of comedy don’t work unless the comedian is able to tell the joke with a straight face.”
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The amicus argues that first amendment rights are at stake. The Onion went into greater detail about the case with The Independent.