Judicial Notice: Cases of Interest

November 05, 2003

Publishers File Amicus in New Times, Inc. v. Isaacks

The Association of American Publishers (AAP), leading a broad coalition of media and First Amendment groups, went into court in Texas today to defend the right of Americans to make fun of public officials through political satire and parody without fear of being sued for defamation. In a case now before the Texas Supreme Court that is attracting national attention, the groups joined in a friend-of-the-court brief asserting the constitutional right of Americans to use “comic exaggeration to draw attention to…misuse of authority.”

The case, New Times, Inc. v. Isaacks et al, is a defamation action brought against the Dallas Observer, an alternative newsweekly, and its parent company, New Times,Inc., as a result of the publication of a fictitious article satirizing the way in which two local elected officials enforced a school violence “zero-tolerance policy” by jailing a 13-year old student for writing a school-assigned Halloween essay. In October 1999, six months after the shootings at Columbine, a 13-year-old 7th grader was jailed for five days in Denton County, Texas (north of Dallas) for writing a homework-related Halloween essay in which he discussed the shooting of two students and a teacher. In the wake of the highly publicized incident, the Dallas Observer published a satiric article entitled “Stop the Madness,” reporting that a 6-year old had been arrested during story-time after writing a book report based on Where the Wild Things Are that contained “cannibalism, fanaticism, and disorderly conduct. The mock news article contained outrageous fictional quotes from several real people, including then-Governor George W. Bush, a representative of the ACLU, the county district attorney Bruce Isaacks, and juvenile court judge Darlene Whitten. The piece drew criticism from some members of the public, who apparently believed it to be a true news story rather than a satire. Isaacks and Whitten sued for defamation. Both the trial court and the Texas Court of Appeals refused to throw the case out, finding there to be issues for the jury as to whether a “reasonable person” would believe the story to be true and whether the defendants acted with “actual malice” in publishing it.

The amicus brief points out that “…beyond the absurd proposition that a six-year-old girl could be arrested for anything, much less writing a book report…on one of the most critically acclaimed and best-loved children’s books of all time, the article is saturated with details, some specifically noted by the Court of Appeals, any one of which would have put a reasonable reader on notice that the article as a whole was not to be taken literally. The brief states that  “Opinions conveyed through the use of humor, while they may rub those criticized the wrong way, are no less entitled to First Amendment protection than those conveyed by other means,” concluding that “In short, satire is the type of speech on matters of public concern the protection of which is the transcendent purpose of the First Amendment.

Among the 15 groups joining AAP on the amicus brief are the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies, the Freedom to Read Foundation,the Motion Picture Association of America, PEN American Center, and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. The brief and a complete listing of the amici can be found on the AAP web site at click here to download the PDF.

For more information contact:

Judith Platt
Email: jplatt@publishers.org