Greg Lukianoff is the president and CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. Adam Goldstein is FIRE’s vice president of Strategic Initiatives.
When you think of free speech heroes, Joseph E. Foreman might not be the first name that comes to mind. But in an Ohio courtroom last week, Foreman, better known as Afroman, demonstrated in often hilarious fashion why America’s commitment to freedom of speech is the dread of tyrants big and small.
Local sheriff’s deputies raided his rural Ohio home in 2022 with a warrant for drug trafficking and kidnapping. Officers smashed in the front door and searched the house with guns drawn. Afroman wasn’t home, but his wife and young children — then 10 and 12 — were. He would later rap: “Did you have to traumatize my kids?” Cops who conducted the search said his songs mocking the raid traumatized them, which is what landed Afroman in court.
If you’re not familiar with his work, Afroman’s music doesn’t suggest he’s a drug kingpin or human trafficker. In fact, he’s best known for his 2000 song “Because I Got High” — which consisted of a list of things he didn’t do, because he got high.
Finding no evidence of a crime at the singer’s home in Adams County in southwestern Ohio, the police left. In their wake: a broken door, a damaged gate and surveillance footage of a law enforcement operation straight out of the Keystone Cops.
Afroman responded the way artists have responded to being wronged since time immemorial: turning it into art. For music videos of songs including “Lemon Pound Cake” (inspired by one officer’s lingering glance at the titular treat under a protective glass dome on the kitchen counter) and “Will You Help Me Repair My Door,” he incorporated footage of the raid from his home security system and his wife’s cellphone.
As he offered at trial — testifying in the drab courtroom while wearing a flamboyant American flag-themed suit and matching sunglasses — Afroman said the music videos were intended to communicate with his fans about the police’s actions and to do “something peaceful to raise the money to pay” for the damage to his house. Inevitably, the fundraising included selling merch satirizing the episode.
Seven of the deputies sued over the music videos, as well as Afroman’s social media posts and commentary, seeking $3.9 million in damages and for the videos to be removed. They argued that using the video infringed on their likenesses, made it harder to do their jobs, cast them into a false light and caused them humiliation and distress.
“Police Officer Pound Cake,” as Afroman dubbed the now-retired baked goods aficionado, complained in testimony that the defendant’s supporters had sent “hundreds of pound cakes” to him at work.
The “Lemon Pound Cake” video went viral, drawing millions of views, and the whole thing only became funnier because the officers were, in effect, trying to sue their way out of being a punch line, drawing even more ridicule.
In 2023, a judge dismissed the officers’ claims about the use of their faces in the videos, stressing that public servants should expect commentary and criticism about how they perform their duties. The court also recognized that police officers acting in their official capacity are public officials, meaning the First Amendment strongly protects the right to criticize them, with only the narrowest exceptions for defamation.
The other claims, related to defamation and invasion of privacy, went to trial. On Wednesday, the jury found for Afroman across the board, rejecting all remaining counts. And while we could explain this in legal terms, the more important framing is this: A country cannot use the force of the state to silence you after it has attempted to humiliate you and damaged your property.
A country doesn’t become free just because a law says it should be. A country is free when the citizen mocks the state actors who harmed him and the system defends his right to do it.
So, yes, the case is hilarious. But there is a fundamental American truth running through this whole thing, perhaps best captured in the imagery from the music video “Batteram Hymn of the Police Whistle Blower,” where Afroman marches defiantly toward the camera in his American flag suit, telling the cops, “Afroman will bring it to you.” That deserves a civil-libertarian salute: Genuinely free people have the right to tell power where to go.
That’s what it means to live in a free nation. Or as Afroman told reporters after the victory: “I didn’t win, America won.”
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