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A week after a federal judge temporarily blocked the San Benito County Board of Supervisors’ attempt to identify who’s behind the Facebook page Benito Beet Beat, the county and the page’s anonymous authors reached a settlement.
On Dec. 5, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in San Jose approved a settlement that bars San Benito County from enforcing the subpoena it had issued on Nov. 18 to name the account’s owners.
The subpoena sought to compel Meta—Facebook’s parent company—to disclose the Facebook page administrators’ identities so officials could pursue restraining orders against them.
As part of the settlement, the county also agreed to give Benito Beet Beat and its attorneys at least 10 days’ notice before taking any future action to identify them.
The nonprofit First Amendment Coalition, which defends free press and freedom of expression, intervened on behalf of the Facebook page’s creators. The coalition’s legal director, David Loy, told BenitoLink that anonymous cartoons, such as those posted by Benito Beet Beat, are political satire and thus protected by the First Amendment.
“The First Amendment protects, above all else, the right to criticize and even make fun of the government,” Loy said. “There’s a reason why we protect anonymous speech, because it protects people from retaliation and ostracism if they express unpopular views. This has been true since the beginning of the republic.”
The dispute between county officials and Benito Beet Beat began on Nov. 3, when the page posted a cartoon showing a character saying voices were telling them they “need to hurt a supervisor or his kids.”
Supervisors Kollin Kosmicki, Ignacio Velazquez, and Dom Zanger said they felt threatened by the post and wanted the county to take action. Although the authors removed the cartoon and issued a public apology, the county issued an administrative subpoena ordering Meta to identify the account’s owners, citing sections of the California Penal Code that criminalize threats against elected officials.
In response, the First Amendment Coalition filed a lawsuit on Nov. 26 arguing that the subpoena violated the First Amendment. That same day, a U.S. Magistrate Judge reviewed the case and found that the Facebook account and its lawyers were “likely to succeed” in showing the cartoon was protected political satire. She ordered the county to pause the subpoena and any efforts to identify the account’s administrators until a future hearing, which never took place because the parties reached a settlement.
Despite the settlement, County Counsel Gregory Priamos told BenitoLink that he “respectfully disagrees” with the court’s decision and still believes the cartoon represented a threat.
“Threats of harm to elected officials and their families are wholly unacceptable and should never be tolerated,” Priamos said. “This depiction was simply not political satire.”
Priamos didn’t respond to BenitoLink’s question about whether a criminal investigation is underway, though he publicly said on Nov. 18 that one had been “initiated and is pending.”
Loy said he’s not aware of any charges filed against Benito Beet Beat. “There was no crime committed here,” he said. “Free speech is not a crime. There is no valid basis for any form of criminal investigation or prosecution based on self-evidently political satire and not even close to being a true threat.”
On Dec. 5, the day the settlement was reached, Benito Beet Beat posted a cartoon of a smiling beet holding champagne and a paper paraphrasing the First Amendment, declaring “I won!” In the post, its authors wrote that the Board of Supervisors hadn’t just lost the case but had created “one of the most spectacular examples of the Streisand Effect,” referring to situations in which efforts to hide or suppress information end up drawing even more attention to it.
“Thanks to your heroically misguided efforts, people across the country are now reading about San Benito County — not for its charm, agriculture, or natural beauty, but for its elected officials’ breathtaking misunderstanding of constitutional law,” the post reads. “Thank you for the publicity. Thank you for the free national spotlight. Thank you for demonstrating to America exactly why the First Amendment exists.”
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