A Louisiana man is fighting in court for the First Amendment right to express satire after he made a joke about COVID-19, and was arrested by a sheriff’s armed SWAT team that confronted him with guns drawn.
The Institute for Justice has confirmed it has taken up the case involving Waylon Bailey of New Orleans.
He had posted a joke online comparing the COVID-19 pandemic to a zombie apocalypse, and his Facebook friends all got the comedy.
But his post, using some pretty flamboyant language and references to the Brad Pitt zombie movie “World War Z,” also drew the attention of the local sheriff’s office.
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
His joke was that the sheriff’s officers had been ordered to shoot the “infected.”
The institute explained what followed: “Waylon was taken to jail and booked, but the absurd charge was dropped when a prosecutor reviewed the case. The arrest was plainly an overreaction and trampled Waylon’s free speech rights, but when Waylon brought a civil-rights lawsuit, the deputy responsible for the arrest was granted qualified immunity. To add insult to injury, the court also said that Waylon didn’t have any free speech rights to make a joke in the first place. Now, Waylon is appealing this decision with the help of the Institute for Justice (IJ), which defends First Amendment rights and challenges immunity doctrines nationwide.”
Explained Ben Field, a lawyer for the institute, “The First Amendment protects your right to tell jokes, even if you upset the government. Officials need to be held responsible for how they treated Waylon. His arrest was unnecessary, dangerous and a violation of his First Amendment rights.”
WND is now on Trump’s Truth Social! Follow us @WNDNews
It seems that there were no complaints to the sheriff’s office about the posting, but the Rapides Parish Sheriff’s Office immediately assigned a detective to investigate.
The detective, “based only on reading the post,” said Waylon had committed a crime, “even though he didn’t know anybody who had actually been frightened or even concerned by the post,” the institute explained.
“I made a joke that lots of other people were making at the beginning of COVID and if the deputies didn’t like it, they could have called and asked me to take it down,” Waylon explained, in a statement released by his lawyers. “Instead, they decided to come with guns drawn, handcuff me and take me to jail. What happened to me was wrong, but no one has been held accountable.”
The district court judge, in granting the officers protection from any punishment for their actions, “reached back to discredited cases from the World War I era” to say that it was “reasonable for police to treat a zombie joke as an act of terror,” the institute said.
Waylon now is seeking a reversal from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
“It’s not a crime to make a joke online,” said IJ lawyer Caroline Grace Brothers “If the police can use their authority to arrest someone for making a joke at their expense, everyone’s rights are at risk.”
EDITOR’S NOTE: Leftwing billionaire George Soros bankrolls everything evil – most recently the 75 pro-criminal “Soros district attorneys” who have transformed America’s most dynamic cities into degraded, crime-infested hellscapes of skyrocketing violent crime. Soros also funds drug legalization, euthanasia, open borders, globalism, Black Lives Matter, “defunding the police,” devaluing America’s currency and destroying her sovereignty. But why?
Whistleblower magazine reveals and explores the stunning truth: Soros, an atheist, literally says he’s “some kind of god,” obsessed with re-creating the world in his image. Here are a few actual quotes from Soros: “If truth be known, I carried some rather potent messianic fantasies with me from childhood…” “It is a sort of disease when you consider yourself some kind of god, the creator of everything, but I feel comfortable about it now since I began to live it out.” “You know, in my personal capacity I’m not actually a selfless philanthropic person. I’ve very much self-centered.” “I am kind of a nut who wants to have an impact.” “Next to my fantasies about being God, I also have very strong fantasies of being mad. … I have a lot of madness in my family. So far I have escaped it.”
Except he hasn’t “escaped it.” Not only is Soros totally mad, but he’s imposing his insanity on America. See Soros and the leftwing world he has created and funded as never before in “THE BILLIONAIRE WHO THINKS HE’S ‘GOD’: Why George Soros is obsessed with destroying America.”
For 25 years, WND has boldly brought you the news that really matters. If you appreciate our Christian journalists and their uniquely truthful reporting and analysis, please help us by becoming a WND Insider!
Content created by the WND News Center is available for re-publication without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@wndnewscenter.org.
SUPPORT TRUTHFUL JOURNALISM. MAKE A DONATION TO THE NONPROFIT WND NEWS CENTER. THANK YOU!
This article was originally published by the WND News Center.
Related:
- Rialto Paramedics Refuse to Enter Medical Facility to Help a Patient in Cardiac Arrest: “Some Covid Law”
- Australian Police HUNT DOWN, Arrest “Covid Fugitives” Like Violent Criminals (Video)
- ‘They Can’t Arrest All of Us’—Rand Paul Calls for Resistance to COVID Tyranny (Video)
- The Atlantic Calls For ‘Pandemic Amnesty’ to ‘Forgive One Another’ For What They ‘Did And Said’ During COVID
- OUTRAGEOUS: CDC Used Cell Phones to Spy on Churches and Schools to Track COVID Lockdown Orders
Turn your back on Big Tech oligarchs and join the New Resistance NOW! Facebook, Google, and other members of the Silicon Valley Axis of Evil are now doing everything they can to deliberately silence conservative content online, so please be sure to check out our MeWe page here, check us out at ProAmerica Only and follow us at Parler, SocialCross, Speak Your Mind Here, and Gab. You can also follow us on Truth Social here, Twitter at @co_firing_line, and at the social media site set up by members of Team Trump, GETTR.
While you’re at it, be sure to check out our friends at Whatfinger News, the Internet’s conservative front-page founded by ex-military!
And be sure to check out our friends at Trending Views:
