Police raided Afroman’s Ohio home last August, an event which his wife filmed and the rapper, known for his hit “Because I Got High,” later used portions of footage from in a music video.

This subsequently led Adams County sheriff’s deputies and sergeants to sue Afroman for using their images, and now, the American Civil Liberties Union is coming to his defense.

Filed Wednesday (April 19) on Afroman’s behalf, an amicus brief written by the ACLU reads, “The First Amendment protects the right of people to criticize government actors, including police officers, especially on matters of public concern.”

It continues, in part: “This case is a classic entry into the SLAPP suit genre: a meritless effort to use a lawsuit to silence criticism. Plaintiffs are a group of law enforcement officers who executed what appears to have been a highly destructive and ultimately fruitless search of a popular musician’s home. Now they find themselves at the receiving end of his mockery and outrage, expressed through a series of music videos about the search, as well as spinoff merchandise and social media commentary.

“They ask this Court not only to award them damages, but to order him to stop speaking about them. At the granular level, the Complaint is an attempt to shoehorn the facts into a series of torts meant for purposes other than Plaintiffs’, and it fails simply because it does not provide allegations that could fulfill the requisite elements of any claim. Conceptually, their allegations run afoul of a much deeper principle: There is nothing the First Amendment protects more jealously than criticism of public officials on a matter of public concern.”

During an interview with NPR from late last month, Afroman revealed that he’s working on an album called Lemon Pound Cake Part 2 with a song about each officer in an attempt to “see how good I could humiliate them.”

The original raid of Afroman’s home by Ohio police was one made on suspicion of drug trafficking and kidnapping, however they discovered no incriminating evidence. Afroman subsequently used the security camera footage from the raid to promote his album Lemon Pound Cake, which was released the following month.

The most viral of the clips used was one of Officer Shawn D. Cooley, a former candidate for Adams County Sheriff and the lead plaintiff in the case, appears to stare at the titular pastry displayed in a glass case in Afroman’s kitchen and a pornographic magazine lying on the counter nearby.