Censoring and even jailing those who share political memes is proving costly for governments at both ends of America, geographically and ideologically.

Hawaii agreed to pay the Christian satire website The Babylon Bee and local political activist Dawn O'Brien about $118,000 in attorney's fees and costs pursuant to their successful lawsuit against The Aloha State's ban on "materially deceptive" content that could harm "the reputation or electoral prospects" of candidates during even-year election seasons.

The day before, Tennessee's Perry County paid seven times more to settle retired cop Larry Bushart's lawsuit for jailing him for more than a month, causing him to lose his job and miss the birth of his grandchild, in response to Bushart sharing an anti-President Trump meme following the September 2025 assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

The resolutions follow on the heels of a $150,000 settlement in which the Trump administration paid former New York Times drug industry reporter Alex Berenson and acknowledged its predecessor pressured Twitter to deplatform Berenson for saying, on the eve of President Biden's COVID-19 vaccine mandate, that the jabs don't stop infection or transmission.

Berenson said he's using the payout to appeal the dismissal of his First Amendment lawsuit against the remaining defendants, Pfizer chairman Albert Bourla and board member Scott Gottlieb — President Trump's first-term Food and Drug Administration commissioner — alleging they conspired with the Biden administration to censor unvaccinated people like him.

Another lawsuit challenging a Kirk-related criminal probe, this one against a student who honored the slain activist on a school "spirit rock," is still waiting for the Charlotte-Mecklenberg Board of Education, in North Carolina, to formally respond six months later. The docket shows the district has received three extensions, with the latest new deadline June 5.

The Stout family alleges the district's criminal investigation of their daughter violated her due process rights. They are represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom, which is also representing the Hawaii challengers.

Six-figure settlement contingent on Hawaii Legislature paying for it

Hawaii unusually decided not to appeal U.S. District Judge Shanlyn Park's invalidation of Act 191 as facially unconstitutional without a trial. It threatened jail and fines against meme-makers unless they put joke-killing disclaimers in content so audiences won't be fooled by it.

The Biden nominee repeatedly faulted the so-called deepfake law, signed by O'Brien meme target Democratic Gov. Josh Green in 2024, as well as Hawaii's arguments that the law doesn't apply to the Bee or O'Brien and that they must identify "exact candidates or issues that their intended conduct will include" to even have legal standing.

The parties filed their resolution with Park on Tuesday, but it's contingent on the Legislature appropriating the $118,237.47 payment to the plaintiffs in next year's session. The Alliance Defending Freedom announced the resolution Thursday.

"In the unlikely event that the Legislature fails to appropriate the agreed-upon settlement amount by September 1, 2027, the parties have reasonably agreed to extend the deadlines for filing a bill of costs and motion for attorney’s fees to September 30, 2027," it says.

The resolution mentions an "attached agreement" with the settlement terms, but it's not in the court docket. ADF told Just the News that all it had to share was on its own case page.

"For centuries, humor and satire have served as an important vehicle to deliver truth with a smile, and this kind of speech receives the utmost protection under the Constitution,” ADF legal counsel Mathew Hoffmann said. "Hawaii’s war against political memes and satire has come to an end, thankfully."

Such efforts against supposed election misinformation via deepfake have been exclusively led by blue states, even as the Kamala Harris presidential campaign in 2024 got caught allegedly manipulating social media to make itself look more popular. 

California preceded Hawaii in its similar laws falling, while Minnesota's has been appealed to the full 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals after a three-judge panel tossed a satirist's lawsuit on the grounds that the law contains an unwritten parody exception. Attorney General Keith Ellison also got away with submitting an expert declaration with an "AI hallucination."

Sheriff says he was 'protecting the children in our community'

Retired cop Bushart's $835,000 settlement with Perry County, Tennessee, reflects the personal cost he paid by serving 37 days in jail, unable to pay a $2 million bond, for responding to a local vigil for Kirk by sharing a meme that allegedly threatened Perry County High School.

Defendant Sheriff Nick Weems later admitted he recognized the meme when he saw Bushart's post in a Facebook group for that day's Kirk vigil, and knew it referred to a 2024 school shooting at Iowa's Perry High School, to which President Trump responded, "We have to get over it." Bushart had written over the meme "This seems relevant today."

The arrest warrant, however, didn't mention the Iowa context. The responding officer's affidavit said Weems told him to arrest Bushart because "a reasonable person would conclude [his post] could lead to serious bodily injury, or death of multiple people."

The joint statement between the parties gives Weems a soft landing, in addition to the settlement letting the defendants deny any wrongdoing.

"As Sheriff, there is no responsibility I take more seriously than protecting the children in our community, who are some of the most vulnerable among us," Weems says in the statement. "Ensuring their safety is not just a duty of this office, it is a commitment I carry with me every single day."

Bushart says in the statement: "I am pleased my First Amendment rights have been vindicated. The people's freedom to participate in civil discourse is crucial to a healthy democracy. I am looking forward to moving on and spending time with my family."

Said Adam Steinbaugh, senior attorney with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, which represented Bushart with local counsel Phillips & Phillips: “No one should be hauled off to jail in the dark of night over a harmless meme just because the authorities disagree with its message."

Earlier this year, Tennessee's Austin Peay State University paid a professor $500,000 and reinstated him to settle his wrongful-termination lawsuit related to comments on Kirk's assassination. Darren Michael had posted Kirk's reported response to the Covenant School shooting, that "some gun deaths" are the unavoidable price of the 2nd Amendment.

FIRE is also representing Monica Meeks, a Tennessee state employee fired for calling Kirk a "white supremacist" in a Facebook comment on a friend's post about his death. 

Commerce and Insurance Commissioner Carter Lawrence said he fired her "for bringing the State into disrepute" through her "bias and disregard" toward constituents on social media while identifying as a department employee.