Babylon Bee Lawsuit for Free Speech

Babylon Bee Lawsuit for Free Speech

A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.  Proverbs 17:22

Apparently, funny memes are illegal in California now.  What killjoy!

This morning, I joined Babylon Bee in a lawsuit to challenge the unconstitutional new laws signed by Gavin Newsom.  Read our Complaint here: Verified Complaint Filed 9.30.2024

🚨BREAKING (NOT A JOKE): We’re suing CA for humorless, authoritarian censorship of political speech & satire

Today, on behalf of @TheBabylonBee and @lawyerkelly, we filed a federal challenge to CA’s new laws censoring online political speech.

The Founders didn’t give us the #1A… pic.twitter.com/2D7bAxIT6m

— Alliance Defending Freedom (@ADFLegal) September 30, 2024

California Passed Two Laws Punishing Speakers Like Babylon Bee and Me

California recently passed two laws that punish speakers like us for posting certain political commentary online.

In July, California Governor Gavin Newsom tweeted that a parody video of Kamala Harris should be “illegal.”

I just signed a bill to make this illegal in the state of California.

You can no longer knowingly distribute an ad or other election communications that contain materially deceptive content — including deepfakes. https://t.co/VU4b8RBf6N

— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) September 17, 2024

The legislature heard the call and passed two laws that forbid political expression under the label of “materially deceptive content.”

AB 2839

(AB 2839) bans people from distributing content California deems “materially deceptive” about candidates, elected officials, and elections, allowing various officials and anyone else who sees the content to sue, have posts removed, and get attorneys’ fees.

AB 2839 also forces The Bee and Rickert to include a label on their satire that makes the satire so obvious that it defeats the point of posting it.

Read AB 2839 here: AB 2839

AB 2655

The second law (AB 2655) converts social media platforms into California state snitches by requiring them to field reports about user posts with “materially deceptive content” and then remove or label them.

Newsom eventually signed the bills, proudly tweeting that the laws now outlawed the political parody video that upset him earlier.

For Newsom, it was mission accomplished.

Read AB 2655 here: AB 2655

Satire in Ancient Times

• Egyptian Satire: One of the earliest known examples of satire is “The Satire of the Trades,” which dates from around the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC. This work criticizes various professions, using humor to highlight the burdens of different vocations compared to the life of a scribe.

• • Greek Satire: In ancient Greece, the playwright Aristophanes is often credited with early and influential satirical works. His plays, performed in the 5th century BC, used comedy and parody to criticize political figures and societal norms. For instance, in “The Knights” and other works, he satirized the powerful and the policies of Athens, making him one of the first known political satirists.

• Roman Satire: Moving forward, the Roman poet Lucilius is often considered the “inventor” of satire as a distinct genre, with his work influencing later Roman satirists like Horace and Juvenal. While Lucilius didn’t invent satire out of whole cloth (given the earlier Greek examples), he formalized it into a recognized literary form in Rome, blending personal invective with social criticism.

Satire is Protected Free Speech

Jerry Falwell sued Larry Flynt, thee publisher of Hustler magazine, for this mock Campari ad.

This led to the landmark case, Hustler Magazine Inc v Falwell, which reached the U.S. Supreme Court in 1988. Unanimous Decision – Satire is Protected Speech

The Court, in a unanimous decision, ruled that satire, even if it could not be mistaken for truth, was safeguarded under the First Amendment.

The justices argued that failing to protect such speech would jeopardize all forms of political caricature and parody.

First Amendment

From my Complaint…

But Newsom and the legislature forgot about the First Amendment. Their laws regulating “materially deceptive content” forbid anyone from posting or reposting content that harms a candidate’s
“reputation” or “electoral prospects,” “influences an election in California,” undermines “confidence in” an election’s “outcome,” and more.

These subjective terms are codewords that allow government officials and political opponents to sue over content they dislike. These broad and vague laws will chill speech and debate that criticizes politicians and their platforms.

Such censorship threatens the heart of public discourse. When debating controversial political ideas, candidates, and views, it is often hard to separate fact from opinion, truth from lies, exaggerations from malicious deceptions, humor from ill will. That’s why the First Amendment gives breathing room for political ideas to air and ventilate—even ideas that are wrong or deceptive. The First Amendment protects this freedom because it trusts the American people to be able to think and decide for themselves in the context of debating political candidates and issues.

Government is NOT the arbiter of political truth online

California officials don’t share that trust. They want to be the arbiters of political truth online. So California passed AB 2839 and AB 2655 to censor speech based on their officials’ perception of truth. But on this, government officials don’t get the benefit of the doubt.

That’s First Amendment 101. We don’t trust the government to decide what is true in our online political debates.

AB 2839 and AB 2655 violate that foundational First Amendment principle. As such, these laws should be facially enjoined—and at a minimum enjoined as applied to the Babylon Bee and Rickert—so that open political debate is returned to the people of California.