ACLU files amicus brief for Afroman

The American Civil Liberties Union has filed an amicus brief — a document submitted to a judge by a person or group intending to influence the court’s decision in a trial to which they are not party — on behalf of Joseph Foreman, aka Afroman.

The ACLU’s action comes as Foreman faces a lawsuit brought by Ohio police officers who raided his home in August on suspicion of drug trafficking and kidnapping, found no incriminating evidence, and felt humiliated when the Palmdale, California-born rapper used security camera footage from the raid in several music videos promoting his album Lemon Pound Cake, released the following month. The most viral of these clips is the one for the record’s eponymous track, in which Officer Shawn D. Cooley — a former candidate for Adams County Sheriff and the lead plaintiff in the case — appears to glance longingly at the titular pastry, displayed in a glass case in Foreman’s kitchen, and at a pornographic magazine lying on the counter nearby.

On the web page summarizing their brief, the ACLU write that Cooley and his co-plaintiffs are “alleging various torts in connection with the use of their images from the security footage” and demanding “damages from Mr. Foreman, as well as an injunction to stop speaking about and using images of them.” In the brief itself, they refer to the case as “a classic entry into the SLAPP suit genre: a meritless effort to use a lawsuit to silence criticism. And not just any criticism, but criticism specifically of government actors.

“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,” the brief continues. “Now they find themselves at the receiving end of his mockery and outrage, expressed through a series of music videos about the search, as well as spinoff merchandise and social media commentary. They ask this Court not only to award them damages, but to order him to stop speaking about them. At the granular level, the Complaint is an attempt to shoehorn the facts into a series of torts meant for purposes other than Plaintiffs’, and it fails simply because it does not provide allegations that could fulfill the requisite elements of any claim. Conceptually, their allegations run afoul of a much deeper principle: There is nothing the First Amendment protects more jealously [sic] than criticism of public officials on a matter of public concern.”

Afroman has expressed little interest in allowing the Adams County Sheriff’s Department to stop him from exercising his First Amendment rights. In a recent interview with NPR, he said he was working on a sequel to Lemon Pound Cake with a song about every officer who raided his home (and subsequently sued him) as part of his ongoing effort to “see how good I could humiliate them.” The FADER has reached out to Afroman for further comment.