A lawsuit filed against Afroman by a group of Ohio police officers after they raided his home is “nothing short of absurd,” the American Civil Liberties Union says – and a clear threat to his First Amendment rights.
In a motion filed Wednesday, the activist group asked an Ohio court to immediately dismiss the case, which claims that Afroman (real name Joseph Forman) caused the officers “emotional distress” by publicizing images of the guns-drawn raid on his home. The ACLU called it “a meritless effort to use a lawsuit to silence criticism.”
“Plaintiffs are a group of law enforcement officers who executed what appears to have been a highly destructive and ultimately fruitless search of a popular musician’s home. Now they find themselves at the receiving end of his mockery and outrage,” the ACLU wrote. “There is nothing the First Amendment protects more jealously than criticism of public officials on a matter of public concern.”
Police raided Afroman’s Ohio home with guns drawn on Aug. 21, smashing down his door and seizing $5,031 in cash and other property. The raid came on a search warrant linked to suspicions of drug trafficking, but no charges were ever filed and the money was later returned.
After the search, Afroman repeatedly posted video and images to social media, using them to express outrage at alleged damage done to his property and at what he viewed as excessive use of force. One video showed officers searching his home under the title “watch cops steal money.” He later used some of those images on t-shirts and other merchandise, including one that compared one of the officers to an obese character from the animated sitcom Family Guy.
Last month, the officers responded by suing the rapper, claiming the posts and merchandise amounted to an unauthorized commercial exploitation of their likeness, as well as an invasion of their privacy. The officers said they had been “subjected to threats, including death threats” because of Afroman’s posts, and had suffered “emotional distress.”
But in Wednesday’s filing, the ACLU said the officers had not come close to making a coherent claim about what Afroman actually did wrong.
“Plaintiffs do not identify the substance of any particular statement in the videos- or for that matter, anywhere else–that they claim is false,” the group wrote. “Instead, the central focus of their complaint is that Mr. Foreman is making money off of his video commentary and related merchandise, and is criticizing Plaintiffs harshly in the process. That is not tortious conduct; it is protected speech.”
As for the accusation about an invasion of privacy, the ACLU called that claim “nothing short of absurd.”
“They were in Mr. Foreman’s home, not their own,” the group wrote. “Nothing about Mr. Foreman’s expression involves matters of plaintiffs’ intimate personal privacy that could be protected by law. To the contrary, his description–and criticism–of their police work is a legitimate matter of public concern.”
An attorney for the officers did not immediately return a request for comment on Thursday.
