6 Instances When Judges Turned to Urban Dictionary

Since 1999, Urban Dictionary has been the go-to platform for anyone looking to decipher the latest slang. The crowdsourced site, now home to millions of entries, serves as the reference for anyone curious about terms like "Netflix and chill" or why a gathering this weekend is described as "lit."

But its influence has extended into courtrooms, with judges turning to the online dictionary to aid in their decision-making and clarify their written opinions. Below are six words and phrases from Urban Dictionary that surfaced during legal cases.

1. "Catfishing"

Catfishing, a term introduced by filmmaker Nev Schulman in 2010, quickly became a part of everyday language. By 2013, Indiana Judge Jane Magnus-Stinson wrote that two roommates' efforts to deceive their former housemate by pretending to be a young woman online matched Urban Dictionary's definition: "[t]he phenomenon of internet predators that fabricate online identities and entire social circles to trick people into emotional/romantic relationships (over a long period of time)." The court ruled against the two men, who had contested their school's decision to suspend them.

2. "Hoe"

In 1999, Nevada resident William Junge tried to honor his cherished vehicle, a Chevy Tahoe, by applying for a personalized license plate. Unfortunately, "TAHOE" was already in use, so he settled for "HOE". He renewed the plate annually until 2006, when a DMV employee consulted Urban Dictionary and found the plate offensive. After losing in district court, the case was brought before the Nevada Supreme Court. In a 2009 decision, the justices ruled that First Amendment rights extend to license plates. They argued that by rejecting the plate based on one person's interpretation of Urban Dictionary, the DMV failed to provide sufficient evidence to prove the word was inappropriate. Urban Dictionary "allows, if not encourages, users to invent new words or assign new, non-standard meanings to existing words," the justices wrote. "A reasonable person would not accept the Urban Dictionary entries alone as sufficient evidence to declare the word 'HOE' offensive." Junge was allowed to keep his plate.

3. "Shake it Like a Polaroid Picture"

In 2012, the controversial yogi Bikram Choudhury filed a lawsuit against yoga instructors Mark Drost and Zefea Samson, the founders of Evolation Yoga. Choudhury accused Drost and Samson, both graduates of his teacher training program, of stealing his signature method—26 poses performed in a room heated to 105°F, which he had outlined in a copyrighted 1979 manual. Unfortunately for Choudhury, copyright laws don't protect ideas or systems—only their expression. In a 2015 ruling, the United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit, compared Choudhury's sequence of poses to other non-copyrightable processes, such as recipes and "routinized physical movements, from brushing one's teeth to pushing a lawnmower to shaking a Polaroid picture." While the Court acknowledged that choreography is copyrightable, citing Urban Dictionary and WikiHow, they argued that you can't patent basic actions like tooth brushing or Polaroid shaking as choreography. The ideas behind such steps, they ruled, remain uncopyrightable.

4. "Jack"

In 2011, Devante Lumpkins and two companions stole a minivan and used it for a series of armed robberies. After Lumpkins was arrested, police recovered the stolen 2007 Hyundai Entourage. Given that the van was damaged—the seat covers burned, the mirror and CD player destroyed, and the tires worn—the court ordered Lumpkins to pay $1700 in restitution. The adopted name of his group, "the Jack Boys," didn’t work in his favor. A Wisconsin court of appeals upheld the restitution, citing Urban Dictionary's definition of jack (“to steal or take from an unsuspecting person or store”) in their written opinion. The court ruled that Lumpkins owed the $1700 because the damages to the van would not have occurred if he hadn’t, well, jacked it in the first place.

5. "STFU"

Richard G. Kopf, a federal judge in Nebraska, once ran a law blog in his free time. In a 2014 post, he criticized the Supreme Court's majority opinion in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. In his post, Kopf wrote that five male justices of the Supreme Court—who were all Catholics and appointed by Republican presidents—decided that a large corporation could assert a religious objection to the Affordable Care Act’s contraception mandate simply because it was 'closely held' by family members. Kopf argued that the Supreme Court should stop hearing hot-button cases that it can avoid, as doing so creates the appearance of a political agenda, even if one doesn't truly exist. He concluded that the justices should "STFU" and linked to Urban Dictionary's definition of the acronym.

6. "Haters Gonna Hate"

In a 2015 lawsuit, songwriter Jesse Braham claimed that Taylor Swift's hit "Shake It Off" had copied his 2013 track "Haters Gonna Hate." However, Braham’s case was dismissed by U.S. Magistrate Judge Gail J. Standish, a presumed fan of Swift, who shut down the $42 million suit, writing, "At present, the Court is not saying that Braham can never, ever, ever get his case back in court. But, for now, we have got problems, and the Court is not sure Braham can solve them." Standish noted that Braham was far from the first to use the phrases "haters gonna hate" and "players gonna play," referencing several internet memes, 3LW's 2000 song "Playas Gon' Play," and even Urban Dictionary. (Interestingly, the songwriters of 3LW’s track sued Swift in 2017 for copyright infringement, alleging that “Shake It Off” copied their lyrics. The case is still ongoing.)