The Rabbit Hole: All the Court’s a Stage

Editor’s Note: The term ‘influencer’ conjures up thoughts of brand deals, quick-cut videos, and a constant stream of content designed to keep you watching. One viral video spurs thousands of copycats in an endless and fleeting quest for online engagement.  For this week’s The Rabbit Hole, we look at how that influencer culture has seeped into the U.S. courts. - Seamus 

We live in an era of clicks. Social media influencers record flashy 30-second videos with impeccable lighting. Journalists craft the perfect headline full of buzzwords for search engine algorithms. Accounts on X, like Polymarket and Popbase, add “BREAKING” and fire alarm emojis to game engagement. And press shops—both for political and corporate interests—lean into gimmicks, piling onto the latest wave of virality. 

It’s cute, and it sometimes even makes the subject relatable. But it lacks sincerity because the unstated purpose of “growing the brand” is so transparent. 

Recently, there’s been a steady stream of court cases that follow this pattern of flashy, often spurious legal claims coupled with coordinated media roll-out campaigns. Many of these cases appear intended to maximize the impact on public perception as much as, and even occasionally more than, winning in court.

Mr. Shakespeare got it almost correct. All the court’s a stage, and all the lawsuits are merely players. 

Which brings us to a cat, a couch, and the Vice President of the United States. 

On July 7, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a civil complaint in the District of Maine on behalf of a woman who claims she was denied entrance to an official event for criticizing Vice President JD Vance on her cat-themed Instagram account. At face value, the complaint had some merit and constitutional significance in its claims: Elected office holders have to open their official events to the general public, and the Secret Service can’t prevent someone from attending an event for First Amendment-protected speech.

Amanda McGonigle, the plaintiff and the person behind the “CatsOnACouch” Instagram account, was set to attend the event in Bangor, Maine, on May 14, where Vance would tout the newly formed White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud. McGonigle registered to attend the event through the official website for the Office of the Vice President.

McGonigle’s CatsOnACouch, which “exists purr-ly to troll the current administration & have more followers than JD Vance,” has more than 600,000 followers on Facebook and 1.9 million on Instagram. McGonigle calls it a “petty cat account.” She reportedly launched it in response to Vance’s comment about Democratic voters consisting of “childless cat ladies” in 2024.

According to the lawsuit, McGonigle has a habit of attending Vance’s official events and voicing her criticism of the administration. At another event in Nantucket, Massachusetts, in July 2024, a Secret Service agent purportedly said that “of course” they knew about her CatsOnACouch account.

The agents reportedly denied McGonigle entry into the Maine event in May and told her, “We know where you stand.” McGonigle and her lawyers at the ACLU asked for a judge to rule that the Secret Service excluded her based on politically protected speech and bar the Secret Service from prohibiting her future attendance.

The same day that the ACLU filed its complaint on behalf of McGonigle, it issued a press release. In the release, a staff attorney on the case stated, “Ms. McGonigle's satirical social media content is purr-tected speech. Punishing her for her catty commentary is a cat-aclysmic blow to the First Amendment.”

No fewer than six ACLU lawyers are representing ‘CatsOnACouch’. The same day the lawsuit was docketed in Maine, there were 12 habeas corpus lawsuits filed in the Western District of Louisiana for people requesting release from immigration detention for being held for more than six months, a status that, in past times, would have triggered immediate release, but now is up against a U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit that views each case as an individualized set of circumstances. The majority of the plaintiffs are arguing for their freedom without the assistance of any legal counsel.

In April 2020, the conservative legal watchdog Judicial Watch filed a civil complaint in the Western District of North Carolina, alleging that counties in North Carolina were “not taking the steps required by law to remove ineligible registrations from the voter rolls.” The complaint, citing the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), argued that the counties, including Charlotte’s Mecklenburg County, were clearly in violation of the NVRA, which requires election officials to purge ineligible voters, because the number of voters exceeded Judicial Watch’s estimates for the eligible voters in a given county.

As Judicial Watch filed its case in federal court, it issued a broader press release, announcing its findings in North Carolina and four other states. The organization claimed it had uncovered an astonishing 2.5 million extra voter registrations from 378 counties nationwide. Conservative websites, such as the Epoch Times, lauded Judicial Watch for its election integrity efforts. The legal watchdog included the North Carolina case in a fundraising email sent several weeks later as part of its “campaign for clean elections.”

However, in August 2021, a federal magistrate debunked Judicial Watch’s claim that high voter registration rates indicate a violation of the NVRA, writing that the rates were expected “because of the long time period involved in removing ineligible voting records required by NVRA.” The judge also noted that Judicial Watch had filed the case, despite the State of North Carolina writing back to the organization just eight days before about its process for removing ineligible voters. The magistrate judge recommended that Judicial Watch’s complaint be dismissed.

Then, Judicial Watch and the State of North Carolina appeared to enter into settlement negotiations to end the case. However, the State of North Carolina—riding its win in front of the magistrate judge—didn’t agree to any stipulations beyond dismissing the case. In the end, Judicial Watch agreed to voluntarily dismiss the case, which a U.S. District Judge ordered with prejudice, and North Carolina continued its regular process for removing ineligible voters from its rolls.

Judicial Watch, however, touted and fundraised off of the result. In February 2022, the conservative site The Gateway Pundit described the case as “another huge win for Judicial Watch.” Judicial Watch, meanwhile, said it had successfully pressured North Carolina to remove more than 430,000 ineligible registrants from voter rolls. It continued to fundraise off of the decision, citing it in press releases as recently as May 2026 as an example of its legal pressure leading to “election roll clean-ups.”

Judicial Watch was previously sued in 2007 when a whistleblower it had agreed to represent for allegations related to Hillary Clinton’s 2000 Senate campaign in New York accused the organization of using his case for fundraising while doing little to litigate his case. A judge partially narrowed the suit in 2008, ruling that Judicial Watch’s president, as a nonlawyer, couldn’t be held to an attorney’s fiduciary duty. The case continued against the organization itself until it was fully dismissed a year later: After the whistleblower’s attorney was disqualified over a conflict of interest, the whistleblower never obtained new counsel, and the case was thrown out for failure to prosecute.

President Trump’s own litigation strategy has often appeared to many to be more bluster, tying in political and financial messaging, rather than concrete legal claims. His recent defamation cases, including those against Paramount, ABC News, the Wall Street Journal, the BBC, and the New York Times, have frequently combined flimsy legal claims with a torrent of public pressure on the companies to settle. So far, the strategy has only succeeded in pressuring ABC News and Paramount, the later of which is in the midst of a major merger with Warner Brothers Entertainment, to settle. But the defamation suits have also been an effective tool of political messaging, pitting Trump against his long-running foes in the “mainstream media” and providing an opportunity for his campaign to fundraise off of it.

But partisan-leaning organizations and politicians aren’t the only ones that deploy lawsuits as part of their public relations strategy. In August 2020, Epic Games, the developer behind the immensely popular video game Fortnite, sued Apple in the Northern District of California over its control of the App Store. The saga began when Epic Games updated the Fortnite app so that users could purchase “V-Bucks,” Fortnite’s in-game currency, directly through the company rather than through Apple and Google, which runs its own app store for Androids. 

Speaking of performative public acts, last issue we said if ten people became paid Court Watch subscribers, we’d drop our usual paywall for today’s piece. You all answered the call. If we pick up another ten new paid subscribers or tips, we’ll make next week’s open to the world too. Support independent journalism, become a paid subscriber or donate to our tipjar.

This move cut Apple and Google out of the picture, as both charge a fee for purchases through their app stores, violating the terms of service companies have to abide by in order to sell on the app stores. Apple and Google responded by removing the Fortnite app entirely from their app stores. Epic Games, in turn, sued Apple, arguing that it exercised a monopolistic control over its app store, and asked a judge to order Apple to restore Fortnite to the store and award Epic Games damages.

The whole tit-for-tat, however, appeared to be orchestrated to create a backlash against Apple and its hold over the App Store. By some reports, Epic Games had begun planning the lawsuit and an ensuing public relations campaign, dubbed Project Liberty, in 2018, two years before the civil case was filed in California. The company reportedly spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in the run-up to the case, paying public relations firms to prepare its media strategy. One internal document purportedly described the upcoming legal battle as “fun!”

Shortly after Epic Games announced the civil suit against Apple, its account on X (then Twitter) posted a video spoofing Apple’s iconic “1984” commercial announcing its Macintosh computer. In the video, Fortnite players are portrayed as standing up to an animated apple. The text then reads,  “Epic Games has defied the App Store Monopoly. In retaliation, Apple is blocking Fortnite from a billion devices. Join the fight to stop 2020 from becoming ‘1984’. #FreeFortnite”

As part of its media strategy, Epic Games also helped establish a “Coalition for App Fairness” targeting Apple and Google. Apple, for its part, took notice and crafted parts of its legal arguments to call out Epic Games for Project Liberty.

The litigation over the case is still ongoing. Both sides have come away with modest victories, with Epic Games winning its claims under California’s Unfair Competition Law but Apple prevailing on the antitrust issues. In June, the Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal in the case over a civil contempt order against Apple.

Apart from two major corporations feuding, some up-and-coming businesses have crafted marketing ploys around their legal strategy. In 2023, the Supreme Court unanimously sided with Jack Daniel’s, the iconic whiskey company, against a dog toy company, VIP Products. The dog toy company sued Jack Daniel’s in 2014 to protect its trademark on a dog toy called “Bad Spaniels,” which resembled Jack Daniel’s whiskey bottles. 

The lawsuit against Jack Daniel’s, a much larger company that has many times over the legal resources and funds of VIP Products, appeared illogical. But the lawsuit against Jack Daniel’s led to tons of free media and press attention that a small dog toy company would otherwise only dream of. The attention compounded as the case wound its way through the district court, the Ninth Circuit, and the Supreme Court for more than 10 years.

When Justice Elena Kagan announced the opinion of the Court in favor of Jack Daniel’s in 2023, she held up the Bad Spaniels chew toy. The gallery erupted in laughter as Kagan held up the toy and read the ingredients inscribed on it, advertising “43% poo by volume, 100% smelly” instead of Jack Daniel’s 40 percent proof.

To be sure, litigation has always been tactical and had some fanfare behind it. The Supreme Court’s notorious 1896 case condoning segregation, Plessy v. Ferguson, arose when a citizens’ committee composed of Black men in New Orleans raised funds for a private detective to arrest Homer Plessy in a whites-only train car, who was 7/8ths white, and represent him in the litigation up to the Supreme Court. The strategy backfired in upholding segregation, but the lone dissent, written by Justice John Marshall Harlan, set the pathway for the legal strategy that eventually overturned it. However, searching for the strongest defendant to overturn a systemic injustice is different from filing a dead-on-arrival lawsuit covered by every major news organization about whether the Trump administration can host a sporting event. (‘Could a Federal Lawsuit Stop the UFC Fight at White House on Trump’s Birthday? Here’s What to Know’, one of many news reports designed to hit on every search term optimization possible while simultaneously noting the lawsuit has a snowball's chance in hell of receiving a favorable ruling).

The hero myth of the performative lawsuit has seeped into all aspects of our culture. We cheer the Saul Goodmans of the world and smirk when Julia Roberts has the water brought in special for the opposing counsel. The rivalry between Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla in their race to innovate electricity, and the ensuing patent litigation around it, made enough headlines at the time to resurface in the 2017 movie “The Current War,” featuring Benedict Cumberbatch and Michael Shannon.

The drive for clicks and litigation as a form of fundraising or advertising mechanism makes for a good story. It hits on all of our favorite tropes. There is some aspect of ridiculousness or seemingly precious tea that pulls us in. Then an overwhelming sense from our social media feeds and favorite news opinion sites to pick a side in the legal fight. Are you Team Justin or Team Blake? Take our quiz; society demands it.  

If you cover the courts long enough, over time, the endorphin hit of the flashy clickbait lawsuit slowly loses its high. And what’s left is a judicial hangover where only slightly more than one in four low-income citizens trust the U.S. legal system. And who could really blame them? Some of the best lawyers in America would never touch a case if it doesn’t result in TV cameras, and some of the worst lawyers in America can only win if it does. If the current wave of performative lawsuits feels inherently gross, it is because it is. It gums up the system such that the true daily injustices never have a chance for the sunlight. A place where people’s freedom is limited by lack of counsel. It causes storied nonprofits to represent trolling Instagram accounts and politicians and advocacy groups to chase fleeting headlines explicitly designed to enrage their supporters. 

The courts, at their very best, are a place for serious debate. It can decide who is a citizen, who can vote, and in some select cases, who can live. Lawsuits that are filed specifically to drive online engagement cheapen that immense responsibility. 

However, as Shakespeare’s traveler, Jacques, notes so eloquently, eventually the stage ends, and we’re left sans cameras, sans clicks, sans everything. 

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