Satire in the Supreme Court

 

If you flip to the satire section of this newspaper, “Hall Lowlights,” and read an article (which you should do after you read this one), you will notice that many of the articles vary anywhere from embellishments of the truth to straight up completely lying. The reason satire does this is that it’s funny and because while what they say might not be completely true, the lack of truthfulness provides insight into reality by being funny. 

The right to be able to straight-face lie in a news source has been historically protected under the First Amendment, but a legal battle between an Ohioan man, Anthony Novak, and the Parma Ohio Police Department threatened to take away a person’s ability to publish satire. 

In 2016 Anthony Novak set up a fake Facebook page that seemed to be a replica of the Parma police’s Facebook page. The Parma police had a history of racial profiling and discrimination, often hiring less qualified white people instead of more qualified Black candidates. 

Novak’s page intended to satirize many of the practices of the police department. In 12 hours he posted 6 posts about the police department, including one that claimed there was a job opening at the police department which “strongly encouraged minorities to not apply.” 

After seeing these posts, the police department claimed they disrupted the operation of the department, arrested Novak, jailed him for four days, and searched his apartment. He was charged with disrupting police operations but was acquitted at trial. 

Novak then sued the Parma police department claiming they infringed upon his First Amendment right to freedom of speech and his Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable search or seizure. 

The case was initially dismissed by the Sixth US Circuit Court of Appeals because the officers were protected by qualified immunity, a legal principle that protects government officials from civil suits unless it is shown that the official violated “clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.”  

Novak then appealed the case to the Supreme Court.  One organization that was strongly on the side of Novak was the satirical news source The Onion which filed an amicus brief in favor of Novak. If you don’t know what an amicus brief is, it is when a person or group not involved in a case writes to the court to offer insight that may assist a decision. 

The brief the Onion filed was somewhat untraditional as it opened by saying, “The Onion is the world’s leading news publication” which “now enjoys a daily readership of 4.3 trillion and has grown into the single most powerful and influential organization in human history.” It sent on to state, “The Onion’s keen, fact-driven reportage has been cited favorably by one or more local courts, as well as Iran and the Chinese state-run media,” a fact that is surprisingly enough one of the only true things said in the first page of this brief. 

Obviously, this is fake, satire, and meant to be exaggerated. The humor of this comes from the boldface lying and not backing down despite the obvious lie that The Onion is “the single most powerful and influential organization in human history” (that title clearly belongs to “Hall Highlights” newspaper). 

Further into the brief, The Onion explained the requirements for effective satire, saying “for parody to work, it has to plausibly mimic the original” and then argued that the decision by the Sixth Circuit Court creates a requirement for parodists to state that what they are about to say is, in fact, a joke which, in turn, ruins the joke.  

They argued if the reasonable reader can understand that a piece of media is satire, then the satire should be protected. Keep in mind that the reasonable reader isn’t the lowest common denominator. Not everyone has to get the joke for it to be protected under free speech. In the case of Novak, the vast majority of people understood the parody of the page, and that it wasn’t to be taken seriously. 

In this article, I wished to cover just the legal principle and argument surrounding The Onion’s amicus brief, but I highly recommend reading the whole brief for yourself. It is relatively short and quite funny. 

Unfortunately, the Supreme Court decided to reject the appeal of Novak’s case. While Novak is a free man, he was unsuccessful in suing the police department for violating his constitutional rights.