Bee-Loved Satire Site Heads To Court In Hawaii — To Defend Meme Use

Some say it’s the satire site that saved free speech by prompting Elon to buy Twitter and set speech free. Now, The Bee heads to the courthouse to save it again.

Our team appeared for summary judgment in @TheBabylonBee v. Lopez before the USDC District of Hawaii in Honolulu today.

Pictured: Shawn Luiz (local counsel), Dawn O’Brien (client), Mathew Hoffmann, and Jon Scruggs (both ADF Counsel) pic.twitter.com/6pghUf3BKy

— Alliance Defending Freedom (@ADFLegal) December 3, 2025

To nobody’s surprise, the threat to First Amendment speech lampooning politicians is coming from a Blue State where, possibly, they have reflected on just how clownish their political class is.

Even the left’s beloved radical Saul Alinsky admits that ridicule is ‘man’s most potent weapon’ because there is no defense and it’s almost impossible to counter-attack ridicule. It also infuriates the opposition.

Now that the left holds the balance of power in Hawaii, they dare not let such a potent weapon be employed against them. I mean, have you SEEN Maise Horono? Yikes. What kind of a crusing blow to the ego must it be to know you finished 2nd place to that fine example of how VERY committed Dems are to electing ANY clown with a (D) after their name?

Hawaii put so many ‘safeguards’ against the use of satire that compliance would necessarily bleed away any humor the joke was trying to deliver.

From the Alliance Defending Freedom press release on the case, Dems want to literally arrest and imprison people for cracking jokes:

Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys representing The Babylon Bee and a Hawaii resident will be available for media interviews Wednesday following a hearing before the U.S. District Court for the District of Hawaii in The Babylon Bee v. Lopez, a case in which the online satire site is seeking to protect the constitutionally protected right to freely post political content online.

Gov. Josh Green signed S2687 into law in July 2024. It prohibits the distribution of “materially deceptive media” that portrays politicians in a way that risks harming “the reputation or electoral prospects of a candidate” or simply risks “changing … voting behavior.” To post such content, The Bee and others must include large disclaimers, destroying the speaker’s message and the purpose of satire. Violations of the law carry harsh penalties, including jail time, large fines, and lawsuits. ADF attorneys argue that the law violates fundamental free speech and due process rights by using vague and overbroad standards to punish people for posting certain political content online, including political memes and parodies of politicians.

“Hawaii’s war against political memes and satire is censorship, pure and simple,” said ADF Legal Counsel Mathew Hoffmann, who will argue before the court. “Satire has served as an important vehicle to deliver truth with a smile for centuries, and this kind of speech receives the utmost protection under the Constitution. The First Amendment doesn’t allow Hawaii to choose what political speech is acceptable, and we are urging the court to stop this unnecessary censorship.”

“We use comedy to speak about current events in a way others can’t, and Hawaii is robbing us of that voice,” said The Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon. “The First Amendment protects our right to tell jokes, whether it’s election season or not. We’ll never stop fighting to defend that freedom.”

The Babylon Bee will continue to post satirical or parodical content and is unwilling to include the disclaimer. Hawaii resident Dawn O’Brien, who also joined the lawsuit, will avoid posting content she would otherwise post to avoid the harsh penalties. The first violation of the law carries a fine up to $1,000 and up to 30 days imprisonment. A second violation within five years of the first increases the penalty to $2,000 and one year imprisonment.

They went on to make a great play on words that aloha is the ‘breath of life’, identity, to live and breathe freely. There can be no ‘Aloha’ without ‘ha’.

If you ever want to know who the true tyrants are, pay close attention to who you aren’t allowed to offend. You can say anything you want about the political right. But let someone make the world’s oldest political joke about Hillary voters voting the day AFTER polls close, and it’s literally a prison sentence.

When late night TV comics did the same joke about Trump? Bupkis.

And that’s the pattern.

Good for Alliance Defending Freedom.

And thank-you to the Babylon Bee for laughing in the face of your critics, and mocking them too. With spicy and creative takes like this one riffing off the major fraud story in Minnesota:

Or using an infamous Star Wars quote (of Anakin Skywalker killing the young jedis) to lampoon the outrageous and already-debunked statements from the usual Never-Trump media sources put in the words of Pete Hegseth.

And to think, forty million dollars and a team of writers can’t put anything in Colbert’s mouth that’s even remotely as funny as what their little shoestring team puts out on the regular.

How embarrassing it must be for Colbert every single time they crack jokes funnier than anything he’s ever said on air.