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Free Speech

Comedy Club Can't Get Injunction Blocking Claims of Sexual Assault, Racism, Anti-Semitism, and Sexism

Eugene Volokh | 4.27.2026 9:04 AM

From Manhattan trial judge Judy Kim in Rodney's Comedy Club v. Omari, decided April 17 but just posted on Westlaw a few days ago:

[P]laintiff's motion for an order enjoining defendant from "any further social media posts naming, inferring or addressing Plaintiff or Plaintiff's employees in any way or posts related to Plaintiff" and ordering her to "delete any and all posts on social media naming, inferring or addressing Plaintiff or Plaintiff's employees in any way" is denied.

"Prior restraints on speech are the most serious and the least tolerable infringement on First Amendment rights, and any imposition of prior restraint, whatever the form, bears a heavy presumption against its constitutional validity." Accordingly, "a party seeking to obtain such a restraint bears a correspondingly heavy burden of demonstrating justification for its imposition and, to do so, must show that the speech sought to be restrained is likely to produce a clear and present danger of a serious substantive evil that rises far above public, annoyance or unrest."

Plaintiff has not carried its burden here. While the law permits "the restraint of speech that communicate[s] a serious expression of an intent to commit an act of unlawful violence to a particular individual or group of individuals," the allegedly libelous speech plaintiff seeks to restrain "does not meet this exacting constitutional standard."

Looks correct to me; though most courts generally allow injunctions barring repetition of material found defamatory at trial, pretrial anti-libel injunctions are generally seen as unconstitutional prior restraints (see my Anti-Libel........

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