I am a part of a Coffee Party USA team of volunteers we call “The Newsroom”. We come from different states, many walks of life, and have varying political perspectives – true to the Coffee Party notion that Americans can discuss anything “over a cup of coffee”.

On Monday, January 8th, the meme below was posted on the Join The Coffee Party Movement Facebook page by a seven year veteran of the newsroom team.

After hundreds of thousands of views, hundreds of comments and thousands of shares the meme was deleted because there was a recurring comment theme: Snopes debunked the meme. But did it?

The newsroom has done an extensive review of this meme and its content. We found one small error: the decision date was February 2003, not February 2004. The downstream consequences of the decision are accurate. IMHO an inappropriate Snopes article was referenced. And Coffee Party took the credibility hit.

Judge the meme for yourself: the actual decision of the Florida court of appeals can be found at http://caselaw.findlaw.com/fl-district-court-of-appeal/1310807.html

If you would rather not read through a legal opinion, the series of events that led to this decision was well summarized (below) at Fox News Wins Lawsuit To Misinform Public – Seriously By Randy LoBasso at 2:28 pm on Monday June 29, 2009