What do Whale Wars and Sister Wives have in common? The activities and participants in both are the subjects of fairly novel federal court decisions. Most recently, the polygamy show yielded Brown v. Burnham, which we’ve written about extensively here. The whale show yielded Institute of Cetacean Research v. Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, dealing with whether the environmentalists’ tactics could be classified as piracy, which we’ve also addressed previously.
Here’s a question: what other reality shows have resulted in interesting federal litigation? A minimum condition would be that the litigation concern the topic or substance of the show, not contractual and other kinds of production-related disputes among the participants. Do reality shows make for good law? Sounds like a panel for the AALS in two weeks…
UPDATE: It is fairly trivial, but the families of the Mob Wives face federal charges regularly. It does not meet the criteria above, however, because they do not result in interesting rulings.