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Newsjock

(11,733 posts)
Fri Jun 13, 2014, 09:28 AM Jun 2014

ACLU sues Peoria for going after owner of parody Twitter account

Source: Peoria Journal Star

City officials who chose retribution instead of protecting the constitutional rights of a citizen who created a parody Twitter account of the mayor need to be corrected by a federal judge.

That’s the goal of a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of Jon Daniel, the creator of the @peoriamayor account, said an attorney for the ACLU at a news conference Thursday detailing the suit.

“Your city fathers need a lesson,” said Harvey Grossman, the legal director of the ACLU of Illinois. “The speech that Jon engaged in was clearly protected. … This did not require a constitutional scholar.”

... Daniel created the @peoriamayor Twitter account in March using a photo of Ardis and tweeted about sex, drugs and a profane pride in the city of Peoria. City officials noticed it almost immediately and took measures to shut it down, from threatening Twitter with a lawsuit to applying a misdemeanor charge of impersonating a public official to the situation to obtain search warrants for the account and, ultimately, Daniel’s home.

Read more: http://www.pjstar.com/article/20140612/NEWS/140619670

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