The Babylon Bee sues California for silencing satire

California’s Democrats are being sued for shutting down satire.

At the centre of the 72-page lawsuit is the right to freedom of speech for the Babylon Bee and lawyer Kelly Chang Rickert.

Representing Rickert and the Babylon Bee is Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF). They said that the catalyst for the case was legislation recently adopted by Governor Gavin ‘Nuisance’ Newsom.

‘[These] laws censor freedom of speech by using vague standards to punish people for posting certain political content online,’ the ADF argued.

This includes, ‘political memes, parodies of politicians and apply around election time’.

They are designed, ADF explained, to censor speech through subjective standards like prohibiting pictures and videos ‘likely to harm’ a candidate’s ‘electoral prospects’.

California’s Democrats fast-tracked their own version of the Misinformation and Disinformation (MAD) laws in September.

Bills AB 2839 and AB 2655 were made law after an ad (of unknown origin) parodying Kamala Harris, triggered Newsom.

He criticised Elon Musk for resharing the video, and boasted:

‘Manipulating a voice in an ‘ad’ like this one should be illegal. I’ll be signing a bill in a matter of weeks to make sure it is.’

Ironically, AB 2655 was dubbed ‘Defending Democracy from Deepfake Deception’.

AB 2839, sponsored by 12 Democrats, was marketed as protecting elections from deceptive media in advertisements.

Citing AI and election interference, they claimed that ‘fake images or files can skew election results’ and promote election denial conspiracies.

Therefore, in order to secure election integrity, California has decided that it must ban satirical content critical of candidates ‘for a limited time before and after elections’.

This serves to ‘prevent the use of deepfakes and disinformation meant to prevent voters from voting and deceive voters based on fraudulent content’.

A federal court has since put a halt on AB 2839, citing concerns about freedom of speech in response to an unrelated lawsuit put forward by YouTuber Christopher Kohls.

ADF described the laws as ‘forbidding political expression under the label of ‘materially deceptive content’.

Newsom’s law renders satire pointless by effectively demanding comical content come with trigger warnings.

Additionally, ‘AB 2655 converts social media platforms into California state snitches.’

Big Tech will be required to file ‘field reports’ with big government ‘about user posts, then remove or label them false’.

The Babylon Bee v Comrade California lawsuit argues, that Newsom’s MAD laws, ‘threatens the heart of public discourse’.

‘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.’

Slamming their point home, ADF said:

‘California officials don’t share that trust. They want to be the arbiters of political truth online.’

Defending satirical political content, ADF added:

‘The end [goal] of satire is often to criticise or mock an idea, event, or person for the purpose of correction and improvement.’

To this end, satire utilises wit, shock, and awe, in order to ‘provide social commentary in order to expose underlying truths’.

Satirists provide sharp relief, and brevity in an otherwise bloated, and cloudy stream of morose data, and cliched, overdone sloganeering.

Thus, ADF argued, ‘Satirists tell the truth with a smile, so that [they] will not repel people but cure them of their ignorance which is their worst fault.’

The Babylon Bee is based in Florida, however, most of its editing and video work is produced in California.

ADF’s lawsuit aims to stop the enforcement of both laws.

Although they have the veneer of defending democracy, these laws appear to exist with the sole purpose of defending Democrats.

When announcing the important lawsuit, Alliance Defending Freedom said the law is ‘humourless, authoritarian censorship of political speech and satire’.

‘The Founders didn’t give us the First Amendment so politicians like Newsom could appoint themselves fact checkers and humour police. So, we’re taking action,’ they concluded.

The Babylon Bee’s CEO, Seth Dillon, told Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro, he never thought the company would ever get so big, let alone be at the epicentre of the fight to save freedom of speech.

In a separate X post, Dillon remarked, ‘It shouldn’t be necessary to defend comedy in court, but here we are.’

https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/10/the-babylon-bee-sues-california-for-silencing-satire/

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