{"id":95450,"date":"2023-08-26T08:39:59","date_gmt":"2023-08-26T13:39:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=95450"},"modified":"2023-08-26T08:39:59","modified_gmt":"2023-08-26T13:39:59","slug":"95450","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=95450","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

Louisiana Man Arrested for Making a Joke About COVID-19 and Zombies Wins Appeal<\/a>
\n5th Circuit overrules grant of qualified immunity for officers who made warrantless arrest<\/em><\/p>\n

NEW ORLEANS\u2014<\/strong>During the COVID-19 pandemic Waylon Bailey made a joke about the virus, zombies, and his local sheriff\u2019s department on Facebook. Today, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed that Waylon\u2019s joke was protected by the First Amendment and that deputies violated his free-speech rights and his Fourth Amendment rights when they arrested him. Waylon teamed up with the Institute for Justice (IJ) to appeal a lower court decision that granted qualified immunity to the detective and sheriff responsible for his arrest.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m relieved that the court recognized that the deputies were wrong to arrest me for making a joke on Facebook,\u201d said Waylon. \u201cI\u2019m glad that I will be able to hold the detective and sheriff accountable, and hopefully my case will stand as a strong statement to officers about what the First Amendment protects.\u201d<\/p>\n

Judge Dana M. Douglas,\u00a0writing for the unanimous panel<\/a>, said that: \u201cThe First Amendment\u2019s protections apply to jokes, parodies, satire, and the like, whether clever or in poor taste.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe court\u2019s opinion makes clear that the First Amendment applies with full force to online speech,\u201d said IJ Attorney Ben Field. \u201cGovernment officials can\u2019t get away with stretching criminal laws to go after people who make jokes at their expense. This is a victory for free speech and common sense and against the pernicious doctrine of qualified immunity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Waylon Bailey\u2019s March 2020 Facebook post used over-the-top language, emoji, and a hashtag referencing the Brad Pitt movie\u00a0World War Z<\/em>\u00a0in facetiously warning that the local sheriff\u2019s office had been ordered to shoot the \u201cinfected.\u201d Despite the obvious indications that it was a joke, sheriff\u2019s deputies decided to arrest Waylon, without a warrant, under an anti-terrorism law and sent a SWAT team with guns drawn to his garage.<\/p>\n

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Waylon was taken to jail and booked, though the absurd charge was dropped when a prosecutor reviewed the case. But when Waylon brought a civil-rights lawsuit, the deputy responsible for the arrest was granted qualified immunity by the district court. To add insult to injury, the court also said that Waylon didn\u2019t have any free speech rights to make a joke in the first place. The 5th Circuit reversed and remanded to the district court, which will now fully consider Waylon\u2019s civil-rights lawsuit.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cAny reasonable officer would have known that Waylon\u2019s zombie joke was clearly protected by the First Amendment, and certainly wasn\u2019t \u2018terrorizing,\u2019\u201d said IJ Attorney Caroline Grace Brothers. \u201cBy denying qualified immunity to the detective who arrested Waylon, this decision confirms that government officials should not escape accountability when it should have been obvious that their actions were unconstitutional.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Louisiana Man Arrested for Making a Joke About COVID-19 and Zombies Wins Appeal 5th Circuit overrules grant of qualified immunity for officers who made warrantless arrest NEW ORLEANS\u2014During the COVID-19 pandemic Waylon Bailey made a joke about the virus, zombies, and his local sheriff\u2019s department on Facebook. Today, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,24,80],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-95450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-goobermint","category-rights","category-you-cant-make-this-up"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=95450"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95450\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":95451,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95450\/revisions\/95451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=95450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=95450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=95450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}