The Babylon Bee Joins The Onion in Decrying an Ohio Law That Makes Parody a Felony

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The Babylon Bee this week joined The Onion in urging the Supreme Court to defend the First Amendment against an Ohio law that makes parody a felony. The case, which the Institute for Justice is asking the Court to take up, involves Parma resident Anthony Novak, who in 2016 was prosecuted for violating a state law against using a computer to "disrupt, interrupt, or impair the functions of any police, fire, educational, commercial, or governmental operations." Novak supposedly did that by creating a parody of the Parma Police Department's Facebook page.

Among other things, the fake Facebook page included a job notice saying the department "is strongly encouraging minorities to not apply," a warning that Parma had banned food handouts so "the homeless population" would "leave our city due to starvation," and an announcement of "our official stay inside and catch up with the family day," during which anyone venturing outside between noon and 9 p.m. would be arrested. The police department was not amused.

The cops retaliated by investigating Novak, searching his apartment, seizing his electronic equipment, arresting him, and bringing charges that could have sent him to prison for up to 18 months. After a jury acquitted him, Novak filed a federal lawsuit against several officers who were involved in the case, arguing that they had violated his constitutional rights under color of law. But last April, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit ruled that the defendants were protected by qualified immunity, which shields cops from liability unless their alleged misconduct violated "clearly established" law. The appeals court concluded that the cops "reasonably found probable cause in an unsettled case judges can debate," noting that "both the City's Law Director and the judges who issued the warrants agreed with them."

For obvious reasons, the right-leaning Bee, like the left-leaning Onion, is alarmed by the implication that people have no recourse against cops who arrest them for making fun of government agencies. "The Bee is serving a brutal life sentence in Twitter jail as we speak," says its amicus brief in Novak v. City of Parma. "Its writers would very much like to avoid a consecutive sentence in a government-run facility."