“Just Kidding”: Why April Fools’ is Not a Legal Defense

Lily Fredericks*

Introduction: Cultural Origins of April Fools’ Day

Peruse your favorite newspapers on April 1, and you’ll likely read some stories that are complete hoaxes. After all, it’s April Fools’ Day. But where do we get the weird tradition of playing pranks on April 1? Nobody knows for sure. All we know is that the custom was known in Renaissance Europe and likely has roots even older than that.¹

In recent history, however, people have gone to great lengths to create elaborate April Fools’ Day hoaxes. In 1992, National Public Radio ran a story with former President Nixon saying that he was running for president again.² However, it was an actor, not Nixon, and the segment was instead an April Fools’ Day prank that shocked the country.³ In 1996, Taco Bell announced on April 1 that it had purchased Philadelphia’s Liberty Bell and intended to rename it the “Taco Liberty Bell.”⁴ This upset many Americans, and the National Park Service was required to hold a press conference that debunked Taco Bell’s claim.⁵

What happens when an April Fools’ Day prank is not as light-hearted as it seems? April Fools’ Day pranks can, in fact, implicate torts such as intentional infliction of emotional distress, assault, battery, false imprisonment, defamation, or fraud. For example, a fake firing announcement could create emotional distress liability. A staged emergency could support assault or false imprisonment claims. Publishing a false story about someone may qualify as defamation if readers reasonably believe it. Courts have therefore created various standards to decide these types of cases.

When a “Prank” Becomes a Tort: Defamation and Satire

Courts distinguish First Amendment-protected satire from actionable defamation—especially when jokes are not obviously jokes. The Supreme Court in Hustler Magazine, Inc. v. Falwell gave protection to outrageous parody if no reasonable person would interpret it as stating actual facts.⁶ The respondent in this case, a nationally known commentator on public affairs, filed an action against a nationally circulated magazine for “libel and intentional infliction of emotional distress arising from the publication of an advertisement ‘parody’ which . . . portrayed respondent as having engaged in a drunken incestuous rendezvous with his mother.”⁷ The Supreme Court held that the First and Fourteenth Amendments prohibit public figures from recovering damages for intentional infliction of emotional distress without showing that the publication contains a false statement of fact which was made with “actual malice.”⁸

The Court emphasized that this standard protects the free flow of ideas and opinions on matters of public interest, and the state’s interest in protecting public figures from emotional distress is not sufficient to deny protection to speech that could not have been reasonably interpreted as stating actual facts.⁹ The Court argued that here, the “respondent is clearly a ‘public figure’ for First Amendment purposes, and the lower courts’ findings that the ad parody was not reasonably believable must be accepted.”¹⁰ “‘Outrageousness’”, the majority continued, “in the area of political and social discourse has an inherent subjectiveness . . . which would allow a jury to impose liability on the basis of the jurors’ tastes . . . and cannot . . . form a basis for the award of damages for conduct such as that involved here.”¹¹

In San Francisco Bay Guardian, Inc. v. Superior Court of City and County of San Francisco, a San Francisco newspaper played an April Fools’ joke by “lampooning various issues, public officials and private parties” in one of its issues.¹² This led to claims of libel, invasion of privacy, and infliction of emotional distress.¹³ The question for the court was whether the “average reader” would have recognized the issue as a parody, which depends upon a view of the entire issue, i.e., the “totality of circumstances.”¹⁴ Reviewing the full context in which a fake letter appeared in the issue, the court concluded that the average reader would recognize that the letter was a part of a parody and not actually written by a real person.¹⁵

The court supported its conclusion by providing that the table of contents in the issue informed readers under the heading “April Fools!” Additionally, the edition contained a “special parody section,” as well as many other oddities that were part of the overall April Fools’ prank.¹⁶ The plaintiff emphasized that a reader might not notice anything weird when first looking at the “April Fool’s section” and might not look far enough to understand the joke.¹⁷ However, the nature of the parody was to catch the reader off guard at first glance, after which the “victim” realizes that the joke is on her.¹⁸ The court argued that only a viewer who read just the fake letter, accepted it at face value despite its odd message, and looked at nothing else could miss the joke, and that is not the average reader.¹⁹ These cases go to show that the First Amendment and the “reasonable reader” standard are hard barriers to break through when suing over a joke that went too far.

When a “Prank” Becomes a Crime: Criminal Liability

Some April Fools’ Day pranks have even triggered criminal liability. These have included false bomb threats, swatting, filing false police reports, and disorderly conduct. For example, in People v. Crittle, the defendant entered a grocery store, pointed a gun at the cashier, and said, “This is a hold up.”²⁰ Then, “The cashier asked if he was serious and he said yes.”²¹ After the cashier gave the defendant the money, he gave it back and said that it was an April Fools’ joke, asking if the cashier was alright.²² He was later convicted of armed robbery.²³

The Michigan Supreme Court explained that the test for specific intent to commit the crime does not require the defendant to be “not conscious of what he was doing or why he was doing it.”²⁴ In this case, if the jury believed that the defendant was engaging in a drunken prank rather than intending an armed robbery, under the specific intent test, the jury would find the defendant not guilty of the crime charged, although it might find him guilty of some other crime not requiring the same specific intent.²⁵

In United States v. Stinson, the defendant, who was arrested for larceny, admitted to taking hubcaps from an acquaintance’s vehicle but stated that it was an April Fools’ Day joke.²⁶ He said that he did not need the hubcaps and intended to return them the same day.²⁷ In deciding the case, the US Air Force Board of Review addressed the following question: “Is one who takes the property of another, without authority and intending to deprive the owner temporarily thereof, but conceiving his act as a practical joke, guiltless of any [larceny] offense on the basis that he lacks the requisite mens rea?”²⁸

The Review Board noted that in each of three different past cases, the Military Court of Appeals held that the taking of property of another under certain circumstances would not be an offense because of the lack of the necessary mens rea on the part of the accused.²⁹ However, it distinguished those cases from the current case by pointing out that the past cases all involved a taking that was accomplished “with a wholly innocent purpose, not a criminal or evil one.”³⁰ In none of those cases “was there an intent or purpose to violate the rights of the owner.”³¹

In the present case, on the other hand, the “joke” which the defendant intended was, at best, one in which the humor was to be derived from the “discomfiture, worry, and other reactions” of the owner when he found out that his property was missing.³² In the Review Board’s mind, this was not a “wholly innocent purpose.”³³ That the defendant intended to deprive the owner of his property temporarily is admitted in the defendant’s very testimony.³⁴ Lastly, it noted that there was “no doctrine which exempt[ed] a practical joker from . . . criminal law”, and “we do not consider that a perverted sense of humor furnishes a legal excuse for wrongful appropriation.”³⁵ This case shows that there can be a thin line between a joke and criminal liability.

Conclusion

I am not trying to belittle April Fools’ Day completely. In fact, I have been known for playing April Fools’ jokes on my friends and family from time to time (truly lighthearted ones). However, there are limits to “it was a joke,” and as these cases have shown, there is occasionally tension between humor and harm. Ultimately, April Fools’ Day serves as a reminder that humor, while often harmless, is not immune from legal scrutiny. The law does not turn on the speaker’s intent to amuse, but on the effect of the conduct and how a reasonable person would perceive it. Whether in tort or criminal law, courts consistently reject “just kidding” as a categorical defense. As a result, those who participate in the tradition would be wise to remember that while a good prank may earn a laugh, a bad one may earn liability.

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*Lily Fredericks, J.D. Candidate, University of St. Thomas School of Law (Membership Editor).

1. Stephen Winick, April Fools: The Roots of an International Tradition, Libr. of Cong.: Folklife Today (Mar. 28, 2016), https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2016/03/april-fools/ [https://perma.cc/J2YK-ZF9X]. ↩︎
2. HISTORY.com Editors, April Fools’ Day, Hist. (Feb. 6, 2026), https://www.history.com/articles/april-fools-day [https://perma.cc/AXF5-LDBA]. ↩︎
3. Id. ↩︎
4. Id. ↩︎
5. Britannica Editors, April Fools’ Day, Encyclopædia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/topic/April-Fools-Day [https://perma.cc/76AM-QW9Q] (last visited Feb. 27, 2026). ↩︎
6. Hustler Mag., Inc. v. Falwell, 485 U.S. 46, 46–47 (1988). ↩︎
7. Falwell, 485 U.S. at 46–47. ↩︎
8. Id. at 46; “Actual malice” means “with knowledge that the statement was false or with reckless disregard as to whether or not it was true.” Id. ↩︎
9. Id. ↩︎
10. Id. ↩︎
11. Id. at 46–47. ↩︎
12. 17 Cal. App. 4th 655, 657 (Ct. App. 1993). ↩︎
13. Id. ↩︎
14. Id. at 659. ↩︎
15. Id. ↩︎
16. Id. at 659–60. ↩︎
17. Id. ↩︎
18. Id. at 660. ↩︎
19. Id. ↩︎
20. People v. Crittle, 390 Mich. 367, 369 (1973). ↩︎
21. Id. ↩︎
22. Id. ↩︎
23. Id. ↩︎
24. Id. at 373. ↩︎
25. Id. ↩︎
26. United States v. Stinson, 35 C.M.R. 711, 713 (1964). ↩︎
27. Id. ↩︎
28. Id. ↩︎
29. Id. at 714. ↩︎
30. Id. at 715 (quoting United States v. Roark, 31 C.M.R. 64, 65 (1961)). ↩︎
31. Id. ↩︎
32. Id. ↩︎
33. Id. ↩︎
34. Id. ↩︎
35. Id. (quoting United States v. Khoury, 27 C.M.R. 816, 819 (1959)). ↩︎