This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
An Illinois man is fighting a subpoena from officials in Riverview, Missouri, who have demanded he appear before them and answer questions on their claims of "inciting violence" and "cyber bullying" after he went online and posted a joke about the town mayor, Michael Cornell.
And now the Institute for Justice, which has successfully fought similar battles, has written to the mayor and the town board warning them it appears as if they are retaliating against the man, James Carroll, based on his speech in violation of the U.S. Constitution.
The legal team explained it has written to Riverview officials with the message, "The First Amendment is a bulwark against thin-skinned government officials abusing their authority to punish their critics."
It was IJ lawyer Ben Field who added, "You can understand why an elected official would be tempted to retaliate against somebody making a joke at their expense, which is why the Constitution stands in their way."
The IJ is calling for officials to rescind their subpoena and halt their retaliation.
"Joking about elected officials is protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, making Riverview's attempt to punish James a flagrant violation of his constitutional rights and an affront to a core tenet of American democracy," the IJ noted.
"James wrote his joke poking fun at Cornell on the website Nextdoor in early April. Days later, on April 15, and again on April 16, James found a subpoena on his door from the city of Riverview. The subpoena demanded James appear at a Riverview meeting to testify on several allegations, including that he cyber bullied Riverview residents, threatened a city official, and that he defamed someone's character," the organization revealed.
James sued the city to quash the subpoena, and a hearing is scheduled soon.
"The First Amendment prohibits the government from censoring protected speech. That includes retaliating against the speaker. The courts have been clear about this issue. In a very similar case to this—one which IJ argued—the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals held that a joke published online was fully protected by the First Amendment," the IJ said.
In that case, the court said, "[t]he First Amendment's protections apply to jokes, parodies, satire, and the like, whether clever or poor taste."
Field explained to city officials: "It appears that Mayor Cornell issued this subpoena in response to Mr. Carroll's online joke—putatively to investigate the joke, but also with the (likely intended) side effect of inconveniencing Mr. Carroll by compelling him to travel to Riverview to attend a hearing where he would be confronted by City officials about his joke. If that is correct, and the subpoena was indeed retaliation against a joke about a public official, then it is plainly a violation of the First Amendment."
The letter said, "The subpoena hints at some categories of speech that are not constitutionally protected, but it is obvious that none of them applies to an innocuous joke like Mr. Carroll's. For instance, the subpoena mentions '[s]lander and [d]efamation.' But when it comes to public figures like an elected mayor, there can be no defamation without 'actual malice—that is, with knowledge that [the statement] was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.' Here, Mr. Carroll's joke made no statement of fact at all—at most, it implied an opinion based on prior allegations against Mayor Cornell. The subpoena also hints that Mr. Carroll's joke was somehow responsible for '[i]nciting violence.' But, as for defamation of a public official, the constitutional standard for incitement is demanding. It is satisfied only when 'advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.' A (rather mild) online joke comes nowhere near meeting that high bar."
