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“The Onion” Files a Supreme Court Brief

439 points by fortran77 4y ago

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
ttyprintk 4y ago
https://archive.ph/G4Bnn https://archive.ph/G4Bnn
- jononomo 4y ago
  How can I get an archive version of a different NYTimes article? I'm interested in this one: https://archive.nytimes.nytimes.com/2022/10/04/opinion/us-mental-health-community-centers.html https://archive.nytimes.nytimes.com/2022/10/04/opinion/us-me...
  - mikequinlan 4y ago
    https://archive.ph/3uZTd https://archive.ph/3uZTd
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
mgbmtl 4y ago
See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33076821 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33076821 (20 comments)
- gpm 4y ago
  Also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33072030 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33072030 And the brief itself! https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22-293/242292/20221003125252896_35295545_1-22.10.03%20-%20Novak-Parma%20-%20Onion%20Amicus%20Brief.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22-293/242292/2022...
tempodox 4y ago
> Anthony Novak spent four days in jail over a Facebook page he created in 2016 that mocked his local police department. This whole thing should be an Onion satire but it's reality.
- yrgulation 4y ago
  A lot of past decade news sound like onion satire. Both in europe and the us. We have to be careful which way we steer things as a lot of things appear to take a very very non democratic non western direction.
  - AlexandrB 4y ago
    > ...non western direction. What does this mean and how is it relevant to the article or the parent comment? A lot of the recent rollback of rights are very much "western" in nature. The overturn of roe v. wade, for example, is a long standing project of various Christian groups. Nor is "the west" immune to dictatorship - you only have to go back to WWII for proof of that.
    - PathOfEclipse 4y ago
      [flagged]
    - whitepaint 4y ago
      > What does this mean and how is it relevant to the article or the parent comment? It is very relevant. Freedom of speech is one of cornerstones of the West.
      - NoGravitas 4y ago
        Galileo will be pleased to hear it. As will Socrates.
        kube-system 4y ago
        The reason you know those things about those people is because your teachers (and their teachers) thought those mistakes were worth learning from.
zerovox 4y ago
Link to the brief: https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22-293/242292/20221003125252896_35295545_1-22.10.03%20-%20Novak-Parma%20-%20Onion%20Amicus%20Brief.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22-293/242292/2022...
- Spoom 4y ago
  Highly recommend reading the brief. It's actually pretty hilarious.
  - metalliqaz 4y ago
    > "The Onion’s journalists have garnered a sterling reputation for accurately forecasting future events. One such coup was The Onion’s scoop revealing that a former president kept nuclear secrets strewn around his beach home’s basement three years before it even happened.[2]" > [2] See Mar-a-Lago Assistant Manager Wondering if Anyone Coming to Collect Nuclear Briefcase from Lost and Found, The Onion, Mar. 27, 2017, https://bit.ly/3S40xiP https://bit.ly/3S40xiP. Incredible
    - consumer451 4y ago
      > Tu stultus es. You are dumb. These three Latin words have been The Onion’s motto and guiding light since it was founded in 1988 as America’s Finest News Source, leading its writers toward the paper’s singular purpose of pointing out that its readers are deeply gullible people. > The Onion’s motto is central to this brief for two important reasons. First, it’s Latin. And The Onion knows that the federal judiciary is staffed entirely by total Latin dorks: They quote Catullus in the original Latin in chambers. > They sweetly whisper “stare decisis” into their spouses’ ears. They mutter “cui bono” under their breath while picking up after their neighbors’ dogs. So The Onion knew that, unless it pointed to a suitably Latin rallying cry, its brief would be operating far outside the Court’s vernacular. Sum mortuus.
- tremon 4y ago
  I just love that the brief's core argument is summarized in the table of contents, under ARGUMENT.
bee_rider 4y ago
Interesting that they decided to sprinkle some comedy into their brief. I guess that's on brand, hopefully it doesn't hurt them.
- marnett 4y ago
  My understanding was it was mostly a satire of the often long winded and illegible legalese that is often on Supreme Court briefs. The section with random Latin phrases has me in stitches.
  - Doxin 4y ago
    It's both excellent satire and a very well written argument. It's some impressive writing if you ask me.
cabaalis 4y ago
From https://reason.com/2022/09/28/a-parodist-asks-scotus-to-let-him-sue-the-cops-who-arrested-him-for-making-fun-of-them/ https://reason.com/2022/09/28/a-parodist-asks-scotus-to-let-... : > Eleven Facebook users called the police department's nonemergency line about Novak's spoof, which was the basis for the claim that he had disrupted police operations. When the case was presented to a grand jury, Detective Thomas Connor claimed the callers "honest to God believed" that Novak's creation was the department's official page. But when Novak sued Connor and six other officers, the Institute for Justice notes in its Supreme Court petition, "Connor admitted at deposition that none of the callers thought that." I'm pretty sure we all know why this person was arrested, and that there is only one way the court should rule.
- jkestner 4y ago
  Unfortunately, this case isn't about whether the police did something wrong, but about the principle of qualified immunity that the Supreme Court created, and has now become de facto law. The best outcome we're likely to get is that the court will rule that the police department's actions do not fall under qualified immunity, and the city's taxpayers will pay for the damages awarded.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - voxic11 4y ago
    If the officers actions don't fall under qualified immunity then he can be sued personally and would be responsible for paying any damages awarded. The taxpayers might elect to cover the officers damages but they are generally not required to by state or federal law. There are some exceptions to this like New Mexico which abolished qualified immunity but at the same time required that the employer of the police cover any damages resulting from cases where the officer would have previously been covered by qualified immunity.
    - matthewmcg 4y ago
      Even if indemnification is not required by law, it's frequently written into the terms of many employment contracts and collective bargaining agreements. A recent study [1] using public records requests found that virtually all officers are indemnified, meaning they don't have to personally satisfy a judgement against them. [1] https://www.nyulawreview.org/issues/volume-89-number-3/police-indemnification/ https://www.nyulawreview.org/issues/volume-89-number-3/polic...
dominotw 4y ago
- BobbyJo 4y ago
  Is there a difference between someone being charged with a crime for a joke, or simply having the joke removed from the platform it was posted to? I tend to think so. I think platform censorship is a completely different beast than government persecution and prosecution. Is it bad? maybe, but the two don't seem very comparable to me.
  - dominotw 4y ago
    > I think platform censorship is a completely different beast than government persecution and prosecution. Yes but the complaint here is that of its effects on free speech. They are equivalent from that perspective, no?
    - plorkyeran 4y ago
      No, having to worry about your content being removed and having to worry about retribution do not have equivalent effects on free speech.
  - cestith 4y ago
    Platform censorship by the owner of the platform isn't a First Amendment issue. The FBI asserting government pressure to convince or coerce the platform to remove it is government censorship. Where the line is drawn between a polite request and coercion is ... tricky when you're talking about the federal government in an era of increasing pressure to regulate social media.
  - Nifty3929 4y ago
    I agree with you - though as platforms are becoming more tightly regulated and "pressured" by various government agencies and interest groups, I believe the line is blurring. We're seeing our large corporations become de-facto arms of the government.
shagie 4y ago
Gift link: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/04/us/the-onion-supreme-court.html?unlocked_article_code=W1cVC6pDG_ihWChPmFNXhQsWu21UC1EaOrnt3wGcAwaKabMaT94gY9zAEdSrCWE-Zrwa7NzyHGfhHJZyZjp93TT4rTIsphxpakRCJiuIIeZFAqAL-U7OUDcGjMFwPd84w_8J-7FB0c3GS8Dzt_MDyzYmnhKlWT5hThHM20BOtbi3C2eCfzUwFOAFhR3Xflh-S5ujOKGP0kK51OG-873Uu5lotQqSxZ_nMgPFH3BKYZ88PZFUHHn1Vhbw_zmP_N17mA1fwx-odvnjcd3dkdJIDEkS5yi05WxC8Vt-8QzVPaxW_8r1d7vZhYmIT_qUvjc5IxsFalEfEF9GqDuC&smid=share-url https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/04/us/the-onion-supreme-cour...
- O__________O 4y ago
  Related explanation of a NYT’s gift link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33082253 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33082253
Stagnant 4y ago
There really is no excuse for holding people in jail for longer than a day for cases like this, where no violence or big monetary fraud is involved. If the police truly thought that a crime had happened, the appropriate response would have been to call the guy in for questioning and let him go after that. Four days in a jail cell is pretty fucked up.
- standardUser 4y ago
  No person should be detained or held at all unless there's reason to believe they will engage in imminent violence or other major crimes.
- bedast 4y ago
  It's a plain and clear violation of his first amendment protections of free speech. There's no excuse for holding people in jail for any period of time for this. Even being detained for a short period of time is a civil rights violation.
mmastrac 4y ago
This is honestly a beautiful piece of work, and will likely be a popular read for law students for decades to come. This is just from the first part: > The Onion is the world’s leading news publication, offering highly acclaimed, universally revered cover- age of breaking national, international, and local news events. Rising from its humble beginnings as a print newspaper in 1756, The Onion now enjoys a daily read- ership of 4.3 trillion and has grown into the single most powerful and influential organization in human his- tory. > 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 part- time 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. > The Onion’s keen, fact-driven reportage has been cited favorably by one or more local courts, as well as Iran and the Chinese state-run media. Along the way, The Onion’s journalists have garnered a sterling reputation for accurately forecasting future events. One such coup was The Onion’s scoop revealing that a for- mer president kept nuclear secrets strewn around his beach home’s basement three years before it even hap- pened.
- CobrastanJorji 4y ago
  The conclusion is straight up poetry: > The Onion intends to continue its socially valuable role bringing the disinfectant of sunlight into the halls of power. And it would vastly prefer that sunlight not to be measured out to its writers in 15- minute increments in an exercise yard.
- moffkalast 4y ago
  The Soviet Onion
- dralley 4y ago
  > The Onion’s journalists have garnered a sterling reputation for accurately forecasting future events. No one can forget this gem https://www.theonion.com/bush-our-long-national-nightmare-of-peace-and-prosperi-1819565882 https://www.theonion.com/bush-our-long-national-nightmare-of...
Pxtl 4y ago
Even setting aside the particulars of the case, it seems obvious to me that local police forces should be required to have conflict-of-interest rules regarding their own critics, and should be deferring to an alternate police force in such cases, especially in the USA where you have many overlapping police forces available such as the State and FBI.
- zach_garwood 4y ago
  The "conflict of interest rule" you speak of is the First Amendment. It's been around for a while.
  - Pxtl 4y ago
    No, the 1st amendment just says that the cops can't arrest you for speech... unless that speech is threats, fraud, etc. The 1st amendment doesn't say the cops can't punitively arrest you because they don't like your statements if they can find some other justification for it, regardless of the conflict of interest. Police have discretion on enforcement.
    - sponaugle 4y ago
      "Police have discretion on enforcement." - That is perhaps one of the underlying problems. Many of the laws as written rely on 'discretion' to be functional. Nearly every driver in the US who has been driving more than a few weeks is a yet to be convicted multi-time felon.. by the very nature that the laws around driving only work when paired with sometimes arbitrary discretion. Imagine if you go over the speed limit even .1mph, which will happen to almost every car many hundreds or thousands of times per day, and you are sited for such. Consider rules like turn signals needing to be indicated 100 feet before a turn. 99.9 feet and you are violating the law and due a citation. Multiple citations and you should automatically have you license suspended. There is a never ending collection of officers saying that if they want to pull someone over, all they have to do is follow them due to it being impossible to drive with 100% legal compliance. Until we reduce that ability ( which is in the hands of our elected lawmakers), the movement of the 'discretion' just moves where the power target is.
yalogin 4y ago
The police in the US have become too powerful, too uncontrollable. There seems to be no accountability. If the department and union wants to, they can defend and cover up any crime committed by their folks. It's very odd that majority of the people think this is ok. This is just another case where the department knowingly did the illegal thing, but the courts are protecting them too. Overall it's quite appalling.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- fallingfrog 4y ago
  Well, once you put a uniform on someone and a gun in their hand, they instantly become an angelic figure of pure virtue. /s
- stainablesteel 4y ago
  there's a lot wrong in the the fundamentals the us had been founded on recently your data constantly being collected and sold is a violation of unwarranted searches actors like twitter/cloudfare/etc playing morality police about what opinions you're allowed to express on what should be considered a public common needing to write diversity statements for scientific grant funding is a violation of the separation of church and state and the police having no need answer as accountable to the courts shows a serious lack of checks and balances but i think the errors are becoming more obvious to the ever-growing internet-raised generations as they get older and there's going to not only a majority of people realizing this, but there will also be rockstar solutions to all of these things within the next 10-20 years, society will snap back to where it should be as long as people speak openly about these things. i don't believe a dystopian future is the final destination
chasd00 4y ago
Can anyone file a brief with the court? I'd like to file one. There are too many states these days, they should eliminate three.
cb321 4y ago
A few background links that I dug up after reading the NYT article and the actual (hilarious!) Onion amicus brief linked to by @zerovox [1] that may be of broader interest given the ongoing discussion here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualified_immunity https://www.cleveland.com/court-justice/2017/10/man_arrested_for_creating_fake.html [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33081046 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33081046
debacle 4y ago
A friend of mine recently graduated from college with some amount of debt. He put up a "lemonade and tequila" stand outside of his home, with an "out of stock" sign under "tequila." It was silly and a bit childish. Some time later he received a notice from the state that he was selling liquor without a license. His hearing is next month.
- boppo1 4y ago
  I mean, good luck to the state trying to prove he actually sold tequila.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
cm42 4y ago
People clamoring for satire warnings and such should be placed on a watchlist of some kind, or perhaps enrolled in some kind of re-educational program, lest they mistake a book of jokes for an instruction manual and get somebody hurt or something.
- 6stringmerc 4y ago
  Til Tok trends have a way of working themselves out one way or another.
- TMWNN 4y ago
  As one who's been reading The Onion for a very, very, very long time, the amicus brief is a masterpiece and I hope it is studied in law schools and English classes everywhere. But I wonder how many of the commenters feverishly denouncing qualified immunity, and smugly telling themselves "Boy, those Parma police officers are real idiots", insist on and/or 100% require a "/s" or "lol" in any joke, satire, or parody to "get it"?
- c3534l 4y ago
  It really is an indication that someone lacks critical thinking skills. To read satire and never question its validity implies they accepted it uncritically, never asked if it was plausible or reasonable, never thought if the source was trustworthy, never thought to get an independent view. The inability to understand sarcasm and irony really does speak poorly of a person's ability to navigate the world of information overload we live in.
ars 4y ago
I really want to believe that the lawyers signed on the brief legally changed their last names in order to sound funnier.
mabbo 4y ago
> The Onion intends to continue its socially valuable role bringing the disinfectant of sunlight into the halls of power... And it would vastly prefer that sunlight not to be measured out to its writers in 15-minute increments in an exercise yard.[0] It's funny, but it's also an incredibly important point- for the Onion this case lets them know if the police can arrest their employees because they don't like what's written. [0]https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22-293/242292/20221003125252896_35295545_1-22.10.03%20-%20Novak-Parma%20-%20Onion%20Amicus%20Brief.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22-293/242292/2022... (last paragraph)
andsoitis 4y ago
Are the Supreme Court justices required to read the entire brief, or can they stop reading after the first few sentences? https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22-293/242292/20221003125252896_35295545_1-22.10.03%20-%20Novak-Parma%20-%20Onion%20Amicus%20Brief.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22-293/242292/2022...
- zuminator 4y ago
  Justices aren't required to do anything. They make up their own rules and can do whatever they want.
bloomingeek 4y ago
Fortunately the police didn't shoot him dead in his front yard. Today's community law enforcement is out of control when it comes to common sense. With their attitude of "How dare you criticize us!" and their huge hero egos, it's a wonder all of us aren't scared to call the cops for help.
labrador 4y ago
Just use the Tucker Carlson defense: "No rational person would think what I said was actually true"
- tremon 4y ago
  They did: > III. A Reasonable Reader Does Not Need A Disclaimer To Know That Parody Is Parody.
kazinator 4y ago
> filed a friend-of-the-court brief on Monday. Like amicus, but for a third grade reading comprehension exam where dictionaries are not allowed.
cpif 4y ago
From the Onion brief: > At bottom, parody functions by catering to a reasonable reader -- one who can tell (even after being tricked at first) that the parody is not real. If most readers of parody didn't live up to this robust standard, then there would be nothing funny about the Chinese government believing that a pudgy dictator like Kim Jong-un was the sexiest man on Earth. Everyone would just agree that it was perfectly reasonable for them to be taken in by the headline. > The law turns on the same reasonable-person construct. The reasonable-reader test gauges whether a statement can reasonably be interpreted as stating actual facts, thereby ensuring that neither the least humorous nor the most credulous audience dictates the boundaries of protected speech.... see also Golb v. Att'y Gen. of N.Y., 870 F.3d 89, 102 (2d Cir. 2017) ("[A] parody enjoys First Amendment protection notwithstanding that not everybody will get the joke.") I'm curious whether drawing any degree of public attention to the "reasonable-reader construct" will result in more nuanced discussion of misinformation/"fake news" than we normally get (in America). The assumption seems often to be that the reader is always most likely an unreasonable reader, and that the solution to the problem is to accommodate every information stream to unreasonable reading habits, rather than intervening in the problem of widespread credulity (if that is indeed the problem) itself.
danielodievich 4y ago
Onion is a national, nay, worldwide treasure. I remember the furor it caused when they craigslisted their desk from the writer's room. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-onion-writers-room-table-on-sale-10000-craigslist_n_1365736 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-onion-writers-room-table-.... Some lucky person got it, and it was a steal, too!
gnu2 4y ago
exabrial 4y ago
Embarrassing local government is a move that is likely to land you in deep trouble. They’re already fighting for relevancy with inflated budgets; what people want are police/fire, and what they get is multimillion ugly art and payouts to the mayor’s buddies that just randomly happen to own all the construction and law firms. Crazy coincidence.
Eddy_Viscosity2 4y ago
"qualified immunity" strikes again. What's the point of having constitutional protections if the people most likely to violate them are immune from accountability?

439 points by fortran77 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

ttyprintk 4y ago

https://archive.ph/G4Bnn https://archive.ph/G4Bnn

jononomo 4y ago
How can I get an archive version of a different NYTimes article? I'm interested in this one: https://archive.nytimes.nytimes.com/2022/10/04/opinion/us-mental-health-community-centers.html https://archive.nytimes.nytimes.com/2022/10/04/opinion/us-me...
- mikequinlan 4y ago
  https://archive.ph/3uZTd https://archive.ph/3uZTd
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

mgbmtl 4y ago

See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33076821 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33076821 (20 comments)

gpm 4y ago
Also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33072030 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33072030 And the brief itself! https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22-293/242292/20221003125252896_35295545_1-22.10.03%20-%20Novak-Parma%20-%20Onion%20Amicus%20Brief.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22-293/242292/2022...

tempodox 4y ago

> Anthony Novak spent four days in jail over a Facebook page he created in 2016 that mocked his local police department. This whole thing should be an Onion satire but it's reality.

yrgulation 4y ago
A lot of past decade news sound like onion satire. Both in europe and the us. We have to be careful which way we steer things as a lot of things appear to take a very very non democratic non western direction.
- AlexandrB 4y ago
  > ...non western direction. What does this mean and how is it relevant to the article or the parent comment? A lot of the recent rollback of rights are very much "western" in nature. The overturn of roe v. wade, for example, is a long standing project of various Christian groups. Nor is "the west" immune to dictatorship - you only have to go back to WWII for proof of that.
  - PathOfEclipse 4y ago
    [flagged]
  - whitepaint 4y ago
    > What does this mean and how is it relevant to the article or the parent comment? It is very relevant. Freedom of speech is one of cornerstones of the West.
    - NoGravitas 4y ago
      Galileo will be pleased to hear it. As will Socrates.
      - kube-system 4y ago
        The reason you know those things about those people is because your teachers (and their teachers) thought those mistakes were worth learning from.

zerovox 4y ago

Link to the brief: https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22-293/242292/20221003125252896_35295545_1-22.10.03%20-%20Novak-Parma%20-%20Onion%20Amicus%20Brief.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22-293/242292/2022...

Spoom 4y ago
Highly recommend reading the brief. It's actually pretty hilarious.
- metalliqaz 4y ago
  > "The Onion’s journalists have garnered a sterling reputation for accurately forecasting future events. One such coup was The Onion’s scoop revealing that a former president kept nuclear secrets strewn around his beach home’s basement three years before it even happened.[2]" > [2] See Mar-a-Lago Assistant Manager Wondering if Anyone Coming to Collect Nuclear Briefcase from Lost and Found, The Onion, Mar. 27, 2017, https://bit.ly/3S40xiP https://bit.ly/3S40xiP. Incredible
  - consumer451 4y ago
    > Tu stultus es. You are dumb. These three Latin words have been The Onion’s motto and guiding light since it was founded in 1988 as America’s Finest News Source, leading its writers toward the paper’s singular purpose of pointing out that its readers are deeply gullible people. > The Onion’s motto is central to this brief for two important reasons. First, it’s Latin. And The Onion knows that the federal judiciary is staffed entirely by total Latin dorks: They quote Catullus in the original Latin in chambers. > They sweetly whisper “stare decisis” into their spouses’ ears. They mutter “cui bono” under their breath while picking up after their neighbors’ dogs. So The Onion knew that, unless it pointed to a suitably Latin rallying cry, its brief would be operating far outside the Court’s vernacular. Sum mortuus.
tremon 4y ago
I just love that the brief's core argument is summarized in the table of contents, under ARGUMENT.

bee_rider 4y ago

Interesting that they decided to sprinkle some comedy into their brief. I guess that's on brand, hopefully it doesn't hurt them.

marnett 4y ago
My understanding was it was mostly a satire of the often long winded and illegible legalese that is often on Supreme Court briefs. The section with random Latin phrases has me in stitches.
- Doxin 4y ago
  It's both excellent satire and a very well written argument. It's some impressive writing if you ask me.

cabaalis 4y ago

From https://reason.com/2022/09/28/a-parodist-asks-scotus-to-let-him-sue-the-cops-who-arrested-him-for-making-fun-of-them/ https://reason.com/2022/09/28/a-parodist-asks-scotus-to-let-... : > Eleven Facebook users called the police department's nonemergency line about Novak's spoof, which was the basis for the claim that he had disrupted police operations. When the case was presented to a grand jury, Detective Thomas Connor claimed the callers "honest to God believed" that Novak's creation was the department's official page. But when Novak sued Connor and six other officers, the Institute for Justice notes in its Supreme Court petition, "Connor admitted at deposition that none of the callers thought that." I'm pretty sure we all know why this person was arrested, and that there is only one way the court should rule.

jkestner 4y ago
Unfortunately, this case isn't about whether the police did something wrong, but about the principle of qualified immunity that the Supreme Court created, and has now become de facto law. The best outcome we're likely to get is that the court will rule that the police department's actions do not fall under qualified immunity, and the city's taxpayers will pay for the damages awarded.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- voxic11 4y ago
  If the officers actions don't fall under qualified immunity then he can be sued personally and would be responsible for paying any damages awarded. The taxpayers might elect to cover the officers damages but they are generally not required to by state or federal law. There are some exceptions to this like New Mexico which abolished qualified immunity but at the same time required that the employer of the police cover any damages resulting from cases where the officer would have previously been covered by qualified immunity.
  - matthewmcg 4y ago
    Even if indemnification is not required by law, it's frequently written into the terms of many employment contracts and collective bargaining agreements. A recent study [1] using public records requests found that virtually all officers are indemnified, meaning they don't have to personally satisfy a judgement against them. [1] https://www.nyulawreview.org/issues/volume-89-number-3/police-indemnification/ https://www.nyulawreview.org/issues/volume-89-number-3/polic...

dominotw 4y ago

BobbyJo 4y ago
Is there a difference between someone being charged with a crime for a joke, or simply having the joke removed from the platform it was posted to? I tend to think so. I think platform censorship is a completely different beast than government persecution and prosecution. Is it bad? maybe, but the two don't seem very comparable to me.
- dominotw 4y ago
  > I think platform censorship is a completely different beast than government persecution and prosecution. Yes but the complaint here is that of its effects on free speech. They are equivalent from that perspective, no?
  - plorkyeran 4y ago
    No, having to worry about your content being removed and having to worry about retribution do not have equivalent effects on free speech.
- cestith 4y ago
  Platform censorship by the owner of the platform isn't a First Amendment issue. The FBI asserting government pressure to convince or coerce the platform to remove it is government censorship. Where the line is drawn between a polite request and coercion is ... tricky when you're talking about the federal government in an era of increasing pressure to regulate social media.
- Nifty3929 4y ago
  I agree with you - though as platforms are becoming more tightly regulated and "pressured" by various government agencies and interest groups, I believe the line is blurring. We're seeing our large corporations become de-facto arms of the government.

shagie 4y ago

Gift link: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/04/us/the-onion-supreme-court.html?unlocked_article_code=W1cVC6pDG_ihWChPmFNXhQsWu21UC1EaOrnt3wGcAwaKabMaT94gY9zAEdSrCWE-Zrwa7NzyHGfhHJZyZjp93TT4rTIsphxpakRCJiuIIeZFAqAL-U7OUDcGjMFwPd84w_8J-7FB0c3GS8Dzt_MDyzYmnhKlWT5hThHM20BOtbi3C2eCfzUwFOAFhR3Xflh-S5ujOKGP0kK51OG-873Uu5lotQqSxZ_nMgPFH3BKYZ88PZFUHHn1Vhbw_zmP_N17mA1fwx-odvnjcd3dkdJIDEkS5yi05WxC8Vt-8QzVPaxW_8r1d7vZhYmIT_qUvjc5IxsFalEfEF9GqDuC&smid=share-url https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/04/us/the-onion-supreme-cour...

O__________O 4y ago
Related explanation of a NYT’s gift link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33082253 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33082253

Stagnant 4y ago

There really is no excuse for holding people in jail for longer than a day for cases like this, where no violence or big monetary fraud is involved. If the police truly thought that a crime had happened, the appropriate response would have been to call the guy in for questioning and let him go after that. Four days in a jail cell is pretty fucked up.

standardUser 4y ago
No person should be detained or held at all unless there's reason to believe they will engage in imminent violence or other major crimes.
bedast 4y ago
It's a plain and clear violation of his first amendment protections of free speech. There's no excuse for holding people in jail for any period of time for this. Even being detained for a short period of time is a civil rights violation.

mmastrac 4y ago

This is honestly a beautiful piece of work, and will likely be a popular read for law students for decades to come. This is just from the first part: > The Onion is the world’s leading news publication, offering highly acclaimed, universally revered cover- age of breaking national, international, and local news events. Rising from its humble beginnings as a print newspaper in 1756, The Onion now enjoys a daily read- ership of 4.3 trillion and has grown into the single most powerful and influential organization in human his- tory. > 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 part- time 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. > The Onion’s keen, fact-driven reportage has been cited favorably by one or more local courts, as well as Iran and the Chinese state-run media. Along the way, The Onion’s journalists have garnered a sterling reputation for accurately forecasting future events. One such coup was The Onion’s scoop revealing that a for- mer president kept nuclear secrets strewn around his beach home’s basement three years before it even hap- pened.

CobrastanJorji 4y ago
The conclusion is straight up poetry: > The Onion intends to continue its socially valuable role bringing the disinfectant of sunlight into the halls of power. And it would vastly prefer that sunlight not to be measured out to its writers in 15- minute increments in an exercise yard.
moffkalast 4y ago
The Soviet Onion
dralley 4y ago
> The Onion’s journalists have garnered a sterling reputation for accurately forecasting future events. No one can forget this gem https://www.theonion.com/bush-our-long-national-nightmare-of-peace-and-prosperi-1819565882 https://www.theonion.com/bush-our-long-national-nightmare-of...

Pxtl 4y ago

Even setting aside the particulars of the case, it seems obvious to me that local police forces should be required to have conflict-of-interest rules regarding their own critics, and should be deferring to an alternate police force in such cases, especially in the USA where you have many overlapping police forces available such as the State and FBI.

zach_garwood 4y ago
The "conflict of interest rule" you speak of is the First Amendment. It's been around for a while.
- Pxtl 4y ago
  No, the 1st amendment just says that the cops can't arrest you for speech... unless that speech is threats, fraud, etc. The 1st amendment doesn't say the cops can't punitively arrest you because they don't like your statements if they can find some other justification for it, regardless of the conflict of interest. Police have discretion on enforcement.
  - sponaugle 4y ago
    "Police have discretion on enforcement." - That is perhaps one of the underlying problems. Many of the laws as written rely on 'discretion' to be functional. Nearly every driver in the US who has been driving more than a few weeks is a yet to be convicted multi-time felon.. by the very nature that the laws around driving only work when paired with sometimes arbitrary discretion. Imagine if you go over the speed limit even .1mph, which will happen to almost every car many hundreds or thousands of times per day, and you are sited for such. Consider rules like turn signals needing to be indicated 100 feet before a turn. 99.9 feet and you are violating the law and due a citation. Multiple citations and you should automatically have you license suspended. There is a never ending collection of officers saying that if they want to pull someone over, all they have to do is follow them due to it being impossible to drive with 100% legal compliance. Until we reduce that ability ( which is in the hands of our elected lawmakers), the movement of the 'discretion' just moves where the power target is.

yalogin 4y ago

The police in the US have become too powerful, too uncontrollable. There seems to be no accountability. If the department and union wants to, they can defend and cover up any crime committed by their folks. It's very odd that majority of the people think this is ok. This is just another case where the department knowingly did the illegal thing, but the courts are protecting them too. Overall it's quite appalling.

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fallingfrog 4y ago
Well, once you put a uniform on someone and a gun in their hand, they instantly become an angelic figure of pure virtue. /s
stainablesteel 4y ago
there's a lot wrong in the the fundamentals the us had been founded on recently your data constantly being collected and sold is a violation of unwarranted searches actors like twitter/cloudfare/etc playing morality police about what opinions you're allowed to express on what should be considered a public common needing to write diversity statements for scientific grant funding is a violation of the separation of church and state and the police having no need answer as accountable to the courts shows a serious lack of checks and balances but i think the errors are becoming more obvious to the ever-growing internet-raised generations as they get older and there's going to not only a majority of people realizing this, but there will also be rockstar solutions to all of these things within the next 10-20 years, society will snap back to where it should be as long as people speak openly about these things. i don't believe a dystopian future is the final destination

chasd00 4y ago

Can anyone file a brief with the court? I'd like to file one. There are too many states these days, they should eliminate three.

cb321 4y ago

A few background links that I dug up after reading the NYT article and the actual (hilarious!) Onion amicus brief linked to by @zerovox [1] that may be of broader interest given the ongoing discussion here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualified_immunity https://www.cleveland.com/court-justice/2017/10/man_arrested_for_creating_fake.html [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33081046 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33081046

debacle 4y ago

A friend of mine recently graduated from college with some amount of debt. He put up a "lemonade and tequila" stand outside of his home, with an "out of stock" sign under "tequila." It was silly and a bit childish. Some time later he received a notice from the state that he was selling liquor without a license. His hearing is next month.

boppo1 4y ago
I mean, good luck to the state trying to prove he actually sold tequila.

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cm42 4y ago

People clamoring for satire warnings and such should be placed on a watchlist of some kind, or perhaps enrolled in some kind of re-educational program, lest they mistake a book of jokes for an instruction manual and get somebody hurt or something.

6stringmerc 4y ago
Til Tok trends have a way of working themselves out one way or another.
TMWNN 4y ago
As one who's been reading The Onion for a very, very, very long time, the amicus brief is a masterpiece and I hope it is studied in law schools and English classes everywhere. But I wonder how many of the commenters feverishly denouncing qualified immunity, and smugly telling themselves "Boy, those Parma police officers are real idiots", insist on and/or 100% require a "/s" or "lol" in any joke, satire, or parody to "get it"?
c3534l 4y ago
It really is an indication that someone lacks critical thinking skills. To read satire and never question its validity implies they accepted it uncritically, never asked if it was plausible or reasonable, never thought if the source was trustworthy, never thought to get an independent view. The inability to understand sarcasm and irony really does speak poorly of a person's ability to navigate the world of information overload we live in.

ars 4y ago

I really want to believe that the lawyers signed on the brief legally changed their last names in order to sound funnier.

mabbo 4y ago

> The Onion intends to continue its socially valuable role bringing the disinfectant of sunlight into the halls of power... And it would vastly prefer that sunlight not to be measured out to its writers in 15-minute increments in an exercise yard.[0] It's funny, but it's also an incredibly important point- for the Onion this case lets them know if the police can arrest their employees because they don't like what's written. [0]https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22-293/242292/20221003125252896_35295545_1-22.10.03%20-%20Novak-Parma%20-%20Onion%20Amicus%20Brief.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22-293/242292/2022... (last paragraph)

andsoitis 4y ago

Are the Supreme Court justices required to read the entire brief, or can they stop reading after the first few sentences? https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22-293/242292/20221003125252896_35295545_1-22.10.03%20-%20Novak-Parma%20-%20Onion%20Amicus%20Brief.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22-293/242292/2022...

zuminator 4y ago
Justices aren't required to do anything. They make up their own rules and can do whatever they want.

bloomingeek 4y ago

Fortunately the police didn't shoot him dead in his front yard. Today's community law enforcement is out of control when it comes to common sense. With their attitude of "How dare you criticize us!" and their huge hero egos, it's a wonder all of us aren't scared to call the cops for help.

labrador 4y ago

Just use the Tucker Carlson defense: "No rational person would think what I said was actually true"

tremon 4y ago
They did: > III. A Reasonable Reader Does Not Need A Disclaimer To Know That Parody Is Parody.

kazinator 4y ago

> filed a friend-of-the-court brief on Monday. Like amicus, but for a third grade reading comprehension exam where dictionaries are not allowed.

cpif 4y ago

From the Onion brief: > At bottom, parody functions by catering to a reasonable reader -- one who can tell (even after being tricked at first) that the parody is not real. If most readers of parody didn't live up to this robust standard, then there would be nothing funny about the Chinese government believing that a pudgy dictator like Kim Jong-un was the sexiest man on Earth. Everyone would just agree that it was perfectly reasonable for them to be taken in by the headline. > The law turns on the same reasonable-person construct. The reasonable-reader test gauges whether a statement can reasonably be interpreted as stating actual facts, thereby ensuring that neither the least humorous nor the most credulous audience dictates the boundaries of protected speech.... see also Golb v. Att'y Gen. of N.Y., 870 F.3d 89, 102 (2d Cir. 2017) ("[A] parody enjoys First Amendment protection notwithstanding that not everybody will get the joke.") I'm curious whether drawing any degree of public attention to the "reasonable-reader construct" will result in more nuanced discussion of misinformation/"fake news" than we normally get (in America). The assumption seems often to be that the reader is always most likely an unreasonable reader, and that the solution to the problem is to accommodate every information stream to unreasonable reading habits, rather than intervening in the problem of widespread credulity (if that is indeed the problem) itself.

danielodievich 4y ago

Onion is a national, nay, worldwide treasure. I remember the furor it caused when they craigslisted their desk from the writer's room. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-onion-writers-room-table-on-sale-10000-craigslist_n_1365736 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-onion-writers-room-table-.... Some lucky person got it, and it was a steal, too!

gnu2 4y ago

exabrial 4y ago

Embarrassing local government is a move that is likely to land you in deep trouble. They’re already fighting for relevancy with inflated budgets; what people want are police/fire, and what they get is multimillion ugly art and payouts to the mayor’s buddies that just randomly happen to own all the construction and law firms. Crazy coincidence.

Eddy_Viscosity2 4y ago

"qualified immunity" strikes again. What's the point of having constitutional protections if the people most likely to violate them are immune from accountability?