{"id":140215,"date":"2025-12-29T10:51:42","date_gmt":"2025-12-29T18:51:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2025\/12\/29\/best-of-25-man-files-civil-rights-lawsuit-after-being-arrested-over-a-meme\/"},"modified":"2025-12-29T10:51:42","modified_gmt":"2025-12-29T18:51:42","slug":"best-of-25-man-files-civil-rights-lawsuit-after-being-arrested-over-a-meme","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/2025\/12\/29\/best-of-25-man-files-civil-rights-lawsuit-after-being-arrested-over-a-meme\/","title":{"rendered":"Best Of \u201925: Man Files Civil Rights Lawsuit After Being Arrested Over A Meme"},"content":{"rendered":"

The post Best Of \u201925: Man Files Civil Rights Lawsuit After Being Arrested Over A Meme<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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One of the signs you\u2019ve begun thinking like a lawyer is when you happen upon a news story and reflexively think \u201cThat\u2019s a lawsuit waiting to happen.\u201d Case in point \u2014 Larry Bushart getting arrested and charged over a Trump meme. Thankfully, the long wait is over:<\/p>\n

This should be an open and shut case in his favor. The lawsuit will (hopefully) memorialize a strange moment in America\u2019s history where a man\u2019s public murder was used as part of a larger campaign to whip up a frenzy and inspire more calls to violence against minorities<\/a> until it was discovered that the alleged shooter was \u201cdemographically uncooperative.\u201d The weeks following Charlie Kirk\u2019s murder sent everyone into a sentiment censorship frenzy where even paraphrasing his words<\/a> could cost you your job. The zeitgeist was so heavy with thought policing and obeying in advance that even the vice president started jawboning private employers<\/a> to discipline their employees over offending speech. Maybe that\u2019s why the people who reported Bushart and the police who then arrested him didn\u2019t feel too much pause over the deeply un-American actions at play. Fear can get in the way of commitments to liberty \u2014 a few jumps in reasoning lead people to think that Bushart\u2019s post was actually a call for more gun violence; another point that has no way of holding up in court.<\/p>\n

The stakes of this case loom large for Americans as a whole: FIRE lead attorney Adam Steinbaugh who had this to say<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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\u201cIf police can come to your door in the middle of the night and put you behind bars based on nothing more than an entirely false and contrived interpretation of a Facebook post, no one\u2019s First Amendment rights are safe[.]\u201d <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

If Bushart wins, there\u2019s gonna be a hell of a lot of \u201cI told you so-ing.\u201d If he loses, the chilling effects will be so strong that we probably won\u2019t be telling each other anything at all.<\/p>\n

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Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord\u2122 in the Facebook group\u00a0Law School Memes for Edgy T14s . \u00a0He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who is learning to swim,\u00a0is interested in critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at\u00a0[email\u00a0protected] <\/a>and by tweet at\u00a0@WritesForRent<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The post Best Of \u201925: Man Files Civil Rights Lawsuit After Being Arrested Over A Meme appeared first on Above the Law. One of the signs you\u2019ve begun thinking like a lawyer is when you happen upon a news story and reflexively think \u201cThat\u2019s a lawsuit waiting to happen.\u201d Case in point \u2014 Larry Bushart […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":140216,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-140215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-above_the_law"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/xira.com\/p\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/GettyImages-1249723002-nBjXM7.jpg?fit=550%2C314&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140215"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140215\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/140216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}