Legal Question in Constitutional Law in Texas

1st amendment intrusion to silence the press

look at www.cleburneeagle.com. this is represented as a parody of my newspaper. the owners are hid by a proxy and can likely be the local education community as we have recently uncovered violations in a tainted school board election. the purpose of this p[hony website is to have local readers quit the paper and advertisers to quit placing ads.recently a school board member sent emails asking for such action.he denies any part of this latest attempt to silence the truth about these wrongdoings.how far can the go under the protection of parody or satire as protected by the first amendment.the actual intentions are to bankrupt and silence this publication.promonent people may be involved as this has gotten way out of hand.


Asked on 8/16/05, 11:56 pm

1 Answer from Attorneys
Edward Hoffman Law Offices of Edward A. Hoffman

Re: 1st amendment intrusion to silence the press

Satire and parody are protected by the First Amendment, regardless of what the author hopes his writings will cause to happen. Even if the web site openly called for a boycott of your paper and admitted that its goal was to drive you out of business its activities would be legal, as demonstrated by the many boycotts which have occurred over the years without legal consequence.

I have not read the parody site in detail and I do not know what your paper is really like or what the pertinent facts are. If the parody is making false factual statements about your paper -- and if readers believe these statements are true -- you may have a cause of action. Also, if the web site is using your paper's actual name as its URL you may be able to make the owner surrender the URL to you, though he would still be able to post the same content at a different URL.

I have no opinion as to whether you have a claim under either of these theories (or any others) or, if so, how strong your claim might be.

Since you are a newspaper publisher, I would have thought you would want the First Amendment to broadly protect public expression. I'm sure that's how you feel when the expression is your own. Why do you see things differently here? Is your self-interest the only reason?

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Answered on 8/17/05, 5:15 pm


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