Hustler Magazine v. Falwell
| Hustler Magazine v. Falwell | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Argued December 2, 1987 Decided February 24, 1988 | |
| Full case name | Hustler Magazine and Larry C. Flynt, Petitioners v. Jerry Falwell |
| Citations | 485 U.S. 46 (more) 108 S. Ct. 876; 99 L. Ed. 2d 41; 1988 U.S. LEXIS 941; 56 U.S.L.W. 4180; 14 Media L. Rep. 2281 |
| Case history | |
| Prior | Judgment for plaintiff, W.D. Va.; affirmed, 797 F.2d 1270 (4th Cir. 1986); rehearing denied, 4th Cir., 11-4-86; cert. granted, 480 U.S. 945 (1987) |
| Subsequent | None |
| Holding | |
| The creators of parodies of public figures are protected against civil liability by the First Amendment, unless the parody includes false statements of fact made in knowing or reckless disregard of the truth. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed. | |
| Court membership | |
| |
| Case opinions | |
| Majority | Rehnquist, joined by Brennan, Marshall, Blackmun, Stevens, O'Connor, Scalia |
| Concurrence | White |
| Kennedy took no part in the consideration or decision of the case. | |
| Laws applied | |
| U.S. Const. amend. I | |
In Hustler Magazine, Inc. v. Falwell, 485 U.S. 46 (1988), the United States Supreme Court held, voting 8-0, that the First Amendment's free-speech guarantee prohibits awarding damages to public figures to compensate for emotional distress intentionally inflicted upon them unless they can show that the statements that gave rise to the distress were false and that the person that made those statements knew they were false or acted with reckless disregard for the truth in making the statements. Hustler magazine's parody of Jerry Falwell did not satisfy this standard, and so the Court reversed a jury verdict in favor of Falwell, who had previously been awarded $250,000 in damages by a lower court.
Background of the case
Larry Flynt is said to have contributed to the rise of the sexual revolution in the United States by publishing Hustler magazine. While Hustler has always been known for its explicit – even gynecological – pictures of nude women and for its crude humor, the prominent fundamentalist Protestant minister Jerry Falwell found nothing funny about satire the magazine printed in 1983 targeted at him. In a parody of a magazine advertisement for a popular alcoholic drink, Hustler described a drunk Falwell having an incestuous encounter with his mother in an outhouse.
The satire at issue was a takeoff of an advertising campaign for Campari, an Italian apéritif. The real ads were tongue-in-cheek interviews with celebrities talking about their “first time.” The ads played off a double entendre, with the headline (“X talks about his first time”) and the interview first sounding like a discussion of the star’s first sexual experience, then revealing that the discussion actually concerned the subject's first time trying Campari.
The Hustler parody featured a picture of Falwell, and an "interview" in which "Falwell" describes his first sexual experience as occurring “with Mom” in an outhouse while both were "drunk off our God-fearing asses on Campari." In the spoof interview, "Falwell" goes on to say that he was so intoxicated that "Mom looked better than a Baptist whore with a $100 donation," that he decided to have sex with his mother since she had "showed all the other guys in town such a good time," and that they had intercourse regularly afterwards. Finally, when asked if he had tried Campari since, "Falwell" answered, "I always get sloshed before I go out to the pulpit. You don’t think I could lay down all that bullshit sober, do you?" The ad carried a disclaimer in small print at the bottom of the page, reading "ad parody—not to be taken seriously." The magazine's table of contents also listed the ad as "Fiction; Ad and Personality Parody."
Falwell sued Flynt, Hustler magazine, and Flynt's distributing company in the United States District Court for the Western District of Virginia for libel, invasion of privacy, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Before trial, the court granted Flynt's motion for summary judgment on the invasion of privacy claim, and the remaining two charges proceeded to trial. A jury found in favor of Flynt on the libel claim, but found in favor of Falwell on the intentional infliction of emotional distress charge, and awarded Falwell $150,000 in damages.
Flynt appealed to the Fourth Circuit. The Fourth Circuit affirmed, rejecting Flynt's argument that the actual-malice standard of New York Times Company v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964), applied in cases of intentional infliction of emotional distress where the plaintiff was a public figure, as Falwell concededly was. The New York Times standard focused too heavily on the truth of the statement at issue; for the Fourth Circuit, it was enough that Virginia law required the defendant to act intentionally. After the Fourth Circuit declined to rehear the case en banc, the U.S. Supreme Court granted Flynt's request to hear the case.
Majority opinion
"At the heart of the First Amendment is the recognition of the fundamental importance of the free flow of ideas and opinions on matters of public interest and concern. The freedom to speak one's mind is not only an aspect of individual liberty – and thus a good unto itself – but also is essential to the common quest for truth and the vitality of society as a whole. We have therefore been particularly vigilant to ensure that individual expressions of ideas remain free from governmentally imposed sanctions." The First Amendment envisions that the sort of robust political debate that takes place in a democracy will occasionally yield speech critical of public figures who are "intimately involved in the resolution of important public questions or, by reason of their fame, shape events in areas of concern to society at large". In New York Times, the Court held that the First Amendment gives speakers immunity from sanction with respect to their speech concerning public figures unless their speech is both false and made with the knowledge of its falsehood or with reckless disregard for the truth of the statement. Although false statements lack inherent value, the "breathing space" that freedom of expression requires in order to flourish must tolerate occasional false statements, lest there be an intolerable chilling effect on speech that does have constitutional value.
To be sure, in other areas of the law, the specific intent to inflict emotional harm enjoys no protection. But with respect to speech concerning public figures, penalizing the intent to inflict emotional harm, without also requiring that the speech that inflicts that harm to be false, would subject political cartoonists and other satirists to large damage awards. "The appeal of the political cartoon or caricature is often based on exploitation of unfortunate physical traits or politically embarrassing events – an exploitation often calculated to injure the feelings of the subject of the portrayal". This was certainly true of the cartoons of Thomas Nast, who skewered Boss Tweed in the pages of Harper's Weekly. From a historical perspective, political discourse would have been considerably poorer without such cartoons.
Even if Nast's cartoons were not particularly offensive, Falwell argued that the Hustler parody advertisement in this case was so "outrageous" as to take it outside the scope of First Amendment protection. But "outrageous" is an inherently subjective term, susceptible to the personal taste of the jury empaneled to decide a case. Such a standard "runs afoul of our longstanding refusal to allow damages to be awarded because the speech in question may have an adverse emotional impact on the audience". So long as the speech at issue is not "obscene" and thus not subject to First Amendment protection, it should be subject to the actual-malice standard when it concerns public figures.
Clearly, Falwell was a public figure for purposes of First Amendment law. Because the district court found in favor of Flynt on the libel charge, there was no dispute as to whether the parody could be understood as describing actual facts about Falwell or events in which he participated. Accordingly, because the parody did not make false statements, it could not be the subject of damages under the New York Times actual-malice standard. The Court thus reversed the judgment of the Fourth Circuit.
Critical response
Literary theorist and legal scholar Stanley Fish harshly criticized the decision in his essay "Jerry Falwell's Mother," which is contained in his essay collection There's No Such Thing as Free Speech, and It's a Good Thing, Too (Oxford University Press, 1994); see also the essay with the same title as the book. Fish argues that if one has even implicitly a potential answer to the question, "What is free speech good for?"—which for most people would probably be along the lines of, "In the free and open clash of viewpoints the truth can better become known," rather than, "It is intrinsically good for people to produce syntactically correct language utterances, regardless of their semantic content."—then there is no hypocrisy or contradiction in constraining speech in terms of deeper foundational values.
Dramatization
- The People vs. Larry Flynt, a critically acclaimed 1996 film directed by Miloš Forman and starring Woody Harrelson as Flynt and Edward Norton as Flynt's lawyer, features the case prominently.
See also
- Westmoreland v. CBS
- New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964) — "actual malice" standard for press reporting about public figure to be libel.
- Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., 418 U.S. 323 (1974) — opinion is not libel; "actual malice" not necessary for defamation of private person if negligence is present.
- Milkovich v. Lorain Journal Co., 497 U.S. 1 (1990) — existing law sufficient to protect free speech without recognizing opinion privilege against libel claims.
- List of United States Supreme Court cases, volume 485