5/28/2023 0 Comments Stolen realm trainer![]() Whether Novak’s satirical posts were protected parody is a question of fact. The heart of The Onion‘s equal parts serious-and-mocking argument, however, resides in the precise way Donald Trump-appointed Sixth Circuit Judge Amul Thapar cabined his qualified immunity analysis.įrom Thapar’s second attempt at deciding the issue: See what happened? This brief itself went from a discussion of parody’s function-and the quite serious historical and legal arguments in favor of strong protections for parodic speech-to a curveball mocking the way legalese can be both impenetrably boring and belie the hollowness of a legal position. So here is a paragraph of gripping legal analysis to ensure that every jurist who reads this brief is appropriately impressed by the logic of its argument and the lucidity of its prose: Bona vacantia. He reader’s attention is almost certainly wandering. Andew Portinga opine on the value of parody’s historical importance to humanity, civilization, and America through the use of, well, parody.įrom the filing, at length : In a slimmer 23-page brief for The Onion, which they admit is a “convoluted legal filing intended to deconstruct the societal implications of parody,” attorneys Stephen J. Novak’s lengthy petition additionally asks a broader question about revisiting the court-created doctrine of qualified immunity. Novak sued the city and three officers on the basis that he was retaliated against for speech protected by the First Amendment.Īfter a series of combined wins, appeals, remands, and losses, he is appealing to the nation’s high court on the specific question of whether “an officer is entitled to qualified immunity for arresting an individual based solely on speech parodying the government, so long as no case has previously held the particular speech is protected.” For his speech, respondents searched, seized, jailed, and prosecuted Novak for a felony under a broadly written Ohio law prohibiting the use of a computer to “disrupt” or “interrupt” police functions. Novak published six posts on the page, deriding the department through obvious parody. The petition for writ of certiorari sums up the upshot of that briefly online parody and the state’s resulting criminal prosecution: Novak penned six posts as the fake police department, including an advertisement for a “Pedophile Reform event” in which participants could be removed from the sex offender registry and become an “honorary police officer” by solving “puzzles and quizzes,” that officers had “discovered” an “experimental” abortion procedure they would provide for free to teenagers in a police van, and that the department was soliciting job applicants but that minorities were strongly encouraged “to not apply.” On March 2, 2016, Anthony Novak published a parody version of the Parma Police Department’s Facebook page that was up for 12 hours. Much more of this, and the front page of The Onion would be indistinguishable from The New York Times.” “This was only the latest occasion on which the absurdity of actual events managed to eclipse what The Onion’s staff could make up. “First, the obvious: The Onion’s business model was threatened,” the friend of court briefing argues – going back-and-forth between hyperbole and plausibility. ![]() Supreme Court where an Ohio man was arrested and prosecuted for making fun of a police department online. Marshaling several actual facts and the desire “to create fiction that may ultimately merge into reality,” humor publication The Onion filed an amicus brief in a case that may be heard by the U.S. ![]()
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