from WND:
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.
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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.
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.”
