Babylon Bee's New Mexico Lawsuit Tests the State's AI Ad Disclaimer Rule

The Babylon Bee has opened another front in the fight over state election-deepfake laws, this time in New Mexico.

On August 11, 2026, the Bee sued members of the New Mexico State Ethics Commission in federal court. The case is The Babylon Bee, LLC v. Castillo, No. 1:26-cv-02628, in the District of New Mexico.

The complaint does not attack every part of HB 182. Its main target is the law's year-round disclaimer regime for certain covered political advertisements. The Bee argues that those provisions force protected satire and parody to carry a government-prescribed AI warning.

That framing matters because New Mexico's statute has more than one moving part, and the lawsuit is aimed chiefly at one of them.

What New Mexico's law does

New Mexico's 2024 HB 182 amended the Campaign Reporting Act in two different ways relevant here.

First, Section 1-19-26.4 imposes disclaimer rules on certain election-related advertisements containing materially deceptive media. The required disclaimer format varies by image, video, audio, or mixed media.

Second, Section 1-19-26.8 creates a separate ninety-day prohibition. It makes it unlawful to distribute materially deceptive media when the speaker knows the media falsely represents the depicted individual, distributes it within ninety days before an election, intends to alter voting behavior by misleading voters, and the distribution is reasonably likely to do so. That provision includes its own disclaimer safe harbor and criminal penalties for willful and knowing violations.

Those sections are related, but they are not interchangeable. The Bee's complaint is principally aimed at the advertisement-disclaimer provisions, not the separate ninety-day prohibition.

HB 182 defines "materially deceptive media" as image, video, or audio that depicts an individual engaged in speech or conduct in which the person did not engage, was publicly distributed without the depicted individual's consent, and was produced in whole or in part using artificial intelligence.

Why the Bee says the law is unconstitutional

The Bee does not frame the case as a defense of deceptive campaign tricks in general. The complaint alleges compelled speech, overbreadth, vagueness, and content-, viewpoint-, and speaker-based discrimination, both facially and as applied.

The core theory is that satire, parody, cartoons, and memes often rely on exaggeration, inversion, and literal falsity to make a political point. The Bee says forcing a prescribed AI disclaimer onto that type of expression alters the message and undercuts the joke.

The complaint also emphasizes that New Mexico did not exempt satire and parody from the challenged disclaimer requirement. It distinguishes between the statute's exclusion for news stories or editorials from the definition of "advertisement" and a separate safe harbor for broadcasters carrying covered material during bona fide news programming.

Why California and Hawaii matter

The New Mexico case fits a growing pattern of First Amendment challenges to state election-synthetic-media laws.

In California, the Bee and related plaintiffs obtained district-court relief against AB 2839, the state's deceptive-media-in-advertisements law. That ruling is part of the larger Babylon Bee v. Bonta litigation, and the California appeal remains active in the Ninth Circuit.

In Hawaii, the Bee won a permanent injunction against Act 191 in The Babylon Bee v. Lopez. The district court enjoined enforcement in January 2026, and the case later ended without an appeal after a fee settlement.

Those rulings do not control a federal court in New Mexico. They do, however, show that courts have already treated some state election-synthetic-media laws as serious First Amendment problems when the rules reach political satire or impose broad compelled disclosures.

Why this case matters beyond the Bee

As of June 23, 2026, the National Conference of State Legislatures said 31 states had enacted some form of election-related AI or synthetic-media law. The policy trend is real.

The harder question is how far states may go when regulating content that includes protected political expression, including parody, caricature, ridicule, and political memes.

That is why the New Mexico case matters beyond one plaintiff. It puts pressure on a common legislative strategy: permit the speech but require a disclosure label when the content falls within the statute's definition of materially deceptive media.

What to watch next

Three issues are likely to matter most.

First, how tightly the court defines the challenged provisions. The case may turn less on the broad idea of election deepfakes and more on whether New Mexico can apply its ad-disclaimer rule to satire and parody.

Second, whether the state can meaningfully distinguish its statute from the California and Hawaii laws. The text differences matter, and so does the separation between New Mexico's ad-disclaimer regime and its ninety-day prohibition.

Third, how the court treats the relationship between satire and deception. The Bee's position is that protected satire can depict events that did not happen while still conveying an obvious political message in context. New Mexico will likely argue that the statute targets voter deception, not humor as such.

Bottom line

This case chiefly concerns HB 182's advertisement-disclaimer regime, not every part of the law or its separate ninety-day prohibition.

Its broader significance is where courts draw the constitutional line when election-AI disclosure rules reach protected satire and parody.

This article summarizes a newly filed federal complaint and related constitutional issues. It does not provide legal advice.