Jason Mustian
While there are, sadly, still people out there who aren’t familiar with The Onion (and easily fall for its headlines), we’re going to go ahead and assume you’re familiar with what The Onion, itself, calls “America’s Finest News Source.”
Now the ever-popular satirical publication has taken the very serious step of filing an amicus brief with the Supreme Court of the United States.
An actual brief. A serious one.
Well, serious in that it is a real brief, but naturally they added their own Onion flare.
But let’s take a step back and set the stage for why they’ve filed the brief.
At the center of the case is Anthony Novak, a man who launched a parody Facebook page that basically mirrored the Parma Ohio Police Department’s official Facebook page, but with a clearly satirical tilt.
An example post from the parody account:
The City of Parma Police Department, since they are in fact heroes who put their lives on the line daily to protect our rights and serve us, simply let Novak continue exercising his first amendment rights because heroes charge into danger and won’t let their own fear or discomfort justify placing themselves above the citizens they are sworn to protect.
Just kidding, obviously. They arrested (yes, arrested) Novak in 2016 for making fun of them.
Police accused Novak of posting derogatory and inflammatory information under the guise of real officials from the police department, complete with fake job postings accompanied by notifications that the department discouraged minorities from applying.
Novak was charged with one felony count of “disrupting public services” (lol, what a dangerous sounding crime) but was later acquitted at trial.
Novak then sought to sue the Parma Police Department for infringing on his 1st amendment rights but was blocked by the Sixth US Circuit Court of Appeals, because, as you know, police can do whatever they want and face few consequences because they are heroes.
Turns out, The Onion, which makes its bread lambasting these kinds of government actions, has a dog in the fight of whether Novak should be allowed to sue, and has thus issued a brief containing some of the following nuggets:
You can read the entire brief here, but in case you’re not interested in legalese, here’s the final point made by The Onion’s counsel:
“The Supreme Court receives more than 5,000 certiorari petitions each year, and grants only about one percent of them,” said Steve Vladeck, CNN Supreme Court analyst and professor at the University of Texas School of Law.
“As a result, sometimes the most important thing that private litigants can do to help their chances is to help draw attention to their specific case. In that respect, having a friend-of-the-court brief from The Onion that quite effectively underscores the importance of the underlying issue can’t hurt.”
Anyway, I hope the court hears the case, but we’ll see. In the meantime, I leave you with this completely unrelated but nonetheless sharable Onion headline:
