Media

Regardless of the sarcasm and hyperbole, the authorized transient is not a joke.

By Rachel Pannett, Washington Submit

October 4, 2022 | 8:20 AM

The Onion – a satirical publication recognized for poking enjoyable at every little thing from fashionable tradition to world politics – is taking a stab at a severe problem. On Monday, it filed an amicus transient to the U.S. Supreme Court docket in assist of an Ohio man who confronted felony prices over a Fb web page parodying his native police division.

Anthony Novak, an newbie comedian from Parma, a Cleveland suburb, was arrested and briefly jailed after making a pretend social media web page in 2016 styled after the Parma Police Division’s Fb web page. His attorneys argue it was an obvious parody, and he was acquitted at trial.

Novak subsequently filed a civil swimsuit alleging his constitutional rights have been violated, although that was dismissed after a federal appeals courtroom granted the police officers certified immunity – a legal doctrine that protects authorities officers from being sued for allegedly violating civil rights. “There’s no acknowledged proper to be free from a retaliatory arrest that’s supported by possible trigger,” the appellate judges dominated.

Now, Novak is petitioning the Supreme Court docket to take up his case.

True to kind, the supporting brief filed by the Onion’s attorneys Monday takes a satirical method in its bid to get the nation’s prime courtroom to contemplate Novak’s petition. It begins with an outlandishly false declare that the Onion is “the world’s main information publication,” with a “every day readership of 4.3 trillion” that has “grown into the one strongest and influential group in human historical past.”

Regardless of the sarcasm and hyperbole, the authorized transient isn’t a joke. The publication’s purpose is to get the Supreme Court docket to scrutinize certified immunity and free speech rights. (Amicus briefs are paperwork filed by events indirectly concerned in a case to offer the courtroom with further data.)

“The Onion can not stand idly by within the face of a ruling that threatens to disembowel a type of rhetoric that has existed for millennia, that’s notably potent within the realm of political debate, and that, purely by the way, varieties the idea of The Onion’s writers’ paychecks,” the transient says.

It additionally highlights what the Onion suggests are shortcomings within the authorized system on the subject of defending those that use comedy to query folks in positions of authority.

“The Onion usually pokes its finger within the eyes of repressive and authoritarian regimes, such because the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Democratic Individuals’s Republic of North Korea, and home presidential administrations,” the transient says. “So The Onion’s skilled parodists have been lower than enthralled to be confronted with a authorized ruling that fails to carry authorities actors accountable for jailing and prosecuting a would-be humorist merely for making enjoyable of them.”

In keeping with Novak’s lawyers, police obtained a warrant for his arrest over a pretend Fb web page that mocked the division. The web page in query was up for less than about 12 hours earlier than Novak took it down after legislation enforcement threatened a felony investigation. They searched his house, seized his electronics and charged him with a felony underneath an Ohio legislation that criminalizes utilizing a pc to “disrupt” police operations.

Novak’s petition calls on the Supreme Court docket to resolve whether or not officers can declare certified immunity after they arrest somebody primarily based purely on speech. It additionally asks the justices to get rid of the doctrine altogether.

The Onion didn’t instantly reply to a request for touch upon its authorized transient. The Parma police officers named within the transient couldn’t be instantly reached for remark, whereas the town’s authorized division didn’t instantly return requests for remark in a single day Monday. Andrew Wimer, a spokesman for the Institute for Justice, the civil rights legislation nonprofit which is representing Novak, described the Onion transient as “each humorous and really severe.”

“If the police can use their authority to arrest their critics with out consequence, everybody’s rights are in danger,” the institute stated in an announcement.