[ExI] Americans can be put in jail for poking fun at the government? Really?

[BillK]

On Wed, 5 Oct 2022 at 23:29, Stuart LaForge via extropy-chat
<extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
> Parodying the government is protected by the 1st amendment but
> impersonating the police is a felony in all 50 states. I am not sure
> whether there is enough of a difference between pretending to be a cop
> on a public highway and pretending to be a cop on Facebook.
>
> https://www.newsweek.com/woman-pulled-over-fake-officer-noticed-something-off-before-calling-911-1695530
>
> If we let "joking around" become a defense for pretending to be police
> officers and pulling young ladies over on lonely stretches of highway
> to frisk and detain them "for fun", then that could lead to a lot of
> problems. I think the guy in the article got lucky that the police
> didn't throw the book at him. I don't like cops but I like people who
> are not cops but pretend to be even less.
>
> Stuart LaForge
> _______________________________________________


>From the case description he personally wasn't impersonating a cop.

He set up on Facebook a parody copy of the Parma police website with
mocking articles joking about the Parma police.
He was arrested and charged with a felony under an Ohio law that
criminalizes using a computer to “disrupt” “police operations.” He
spent four days in jail and then after a full criminal trial was
acquitted by a jury. The police also searched his home and confiscated
computers, phones, etc. It took over a year for his property to be
returned to him. That case is finished.

What is now in dispute is that Novak filed a civil-rights lawsuit
against the police, for violating his First and Fourth Amendment
rights—those protecting his freedom of speech and freedom from
unreasonable searches and seizures. After several hearings stretching
over five years, the latest decision was to grant the police qualified
immunity and reject his lawsuit.

Qualified immunity is interesting.
It is discussed in detail here:
<http://ionic.motoretta.ca/charm-https-ij.org/case/novak-v-parma/#>
Quotes:
Qualified immunity is found nowhere in the Constitution or the federal
civil-rights statute. Instead, it was made up by the Supreme Court in
1982 for policy reasons. The doctrine shields government officials
from constitutional accountability, even if they act in bad faith,
unless an earlier case ruled that the same sort of conduct was
unconstitutional.

The Sixth Circuit’s opinion effectively enables law enforcement to
censor speech they don’t like by arresting the speakers. After all,
most normal people would choose not to speak at all if their speech
could land them in jail.

But other federal courts of appeal have arrived at the opposite
conclusion. Down in the Fifth Circuit, the court recently denied
qualified immunity to police officers who arrested a woman under
strikingly similar circumstances to Novak’s.[vii] In that case, police
arrested a citizen journalist known for her criticisms of law
enforcement based on a Texas statute that criminalized obtaining
information from government officials. In other words, the journalist
was arrested for asking questions—one of the most routine ways
journalists obtain newsworthy information to publish.

In an opinion that quoted IJ’s amicus brief in the case, Judge James
Ho wrote that because it should have been obvious to any reasonable
police officer that the First Amendment protects the right of people,
in particular journalists, to ask government officials questions, it
should likewise have been obvious that arresting a journalist based
for asking questions is a blatant violation of the Constitution. For
the Fifth Circuit, it did not matter that the police were enforcing a
statute or that their actions were blessed by the judge who issued a
warrant. “We don’t just ask—we require—every member of law enforcement
to avoid violations of the Constitution,” he wrote, “[a]nd when the
violation is as obvious as it is here, we don’t grant qualified
immunity.”[viii]

Because of this circuit split, if Anthony had posted his Facebook
parody while sitting at a computer in Texas (in the Fifth Circuit)
rather than in Ohio (in the Sixth Circuit), he would have been able to
hold the police officers who arrested him accountable for their
unconstitutional actions.

Anthony and IJ are now asking the Supreme Court to weigh in and
resolve this split. Judge Ho is right: government officials shouldn’t
be entitled to qualified immunity when they arrest someone based on
speech that is obviously protected by the First Amendment. The
purposes of the First Amendment are more important than the purposes
of qualified immunity. For the same reasons, Anthony and IJ are asking
the Supreme Court to overturn qualified immunity and restore
constitutional accountability across the country.
----------------

I wonder if the Supreme Court will take this case?


BillK