The Onion Files Hilarious Brief at Supreme Court in Defense of Parody

The Onion, well-known as a satirical news source, has filed an amicus curiae (“friend of the court”) brief with the Supreme Court in the case of Novak v. City of Parma, arguing that publishers of parody should not fear arrest because they do not post disclaimers.

The case concerns a satirical Facebook page created by a man named Anthony Novak to mock the police department in the City of Parma, Ohio. Police arrested Novak for interfering in police operations, and he was acquitted. He then sued the city for violating his rights. He lost his case in the lower courts, which found that police reasonably believed they were acting within the law when they arrested him. Novak appealed the decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit to uphold the dismissal of his case.

In its brief — which is itself something of a parody of a Supreme Court brief — the Onion argues that parody should presumptively enjoy the protections of the First Amendment, especially when it is obviously fake and whether or not it is actually funny. It argues:

In addition to maintaining a towering standard of excellence to which the rest of the industry aspires, The Onion supports more than 350,000 full- and parttime journalism jobs in its numerous news bureaus and manual labor camps stationed around the world, and members of its editorial board have served with distinction in an advisory capacity for such nations as China, Syria, Somalia, and the former Soviet Union. On top of its journalistic pursuits, The Onion also owns and operates the majority of the world’s transoceanic
shipping lanes, stands on the nation’s leading edge on matters of deforestation and strip mining, and proudly conducts tests on millions of animals daily.

…

In this case … the Sixth Circuit ruled that the defendant officers “could reasonably believe that some of Novak’s Facebook activity was not parody” primarily because Mr. Novak “delet[ed] comments that made clear the page was fake.” Pet. App. 8a–9a. But the lack of an explicit disclaimer makes no difference to whether a reasonable reader would discern
that this speech was parody.

Just to be clear, this was not a close call on the facts: Mr. Novak’s spoof Facebook posts advertised that the Parma Police Department was hosting a “pedophile reform event” in which successful participants could be removed from the sex offender registry and become honorary members of the department after completing puzzles and quizzes; that the department had discovered an experimental technique for abortions and would be providing them to teens for free in a police van; that the department was soliciting job applicants but that minorities were “strongly encourag[ed]” not to apply; and that the department was banning city residents from feeding homeless people in “an attempt to have the homeless population eventually leave our City due to starvation.”

The brief admits that The Onion is acting in its self-interest in filing the brief — or, at least to “mitigat[e]” its “future punishment.”

The case is Novak v. City of Parma, Docket No. 22-293.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.