Sacha Baron Cohen has defeated an appeal brought by a former judge who had accused him of defamation.

Roy Moore had said that he was falsely portrayed as a paedophile by comedian Baron Cohen on his show Who Is America?.

A lower court judge had said the interview was “clearly comedy and no reasonable viewer would conclude otherwise”.

And on Thursday, the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals backed that ruling, voting by a margin of 3-0 that the interview was constitutionally-protected speech.

Mr Moore had signed a standard consent agreement before his interview with Baron Cohen and the court said that this waived his right to pursue the $95m (£79m) lawsuit.

But Mr Moore’s lawyer, Larry Klayman, said the agreement had been ambiguous because he had crossed out a provision waiving claims related to alleged sexually-oriented behaviour and questioning.

Mr Klayman said the court’s decision was a “travesty” and Mr Moore and his wife Kayla – who had related claims dismissed by the court – will ask the entire 2nd circuit to review the case.

Lawyers for Baron Cohen, 50, have not commented on the ruling.

‘Falsely and fraudulently’

Mr Moore’s interview with Baron Cohen took place in Washington, where Mr Moore had expected to receive an award for supporting Israel.

According to the complaint, Baron Cohen, disguised as a fictional Israeli anti-terrorism expert, had “falsely and fraudulently introduced a false and fraudulent ‘device’ supposedly invented by the Israeli Army to detect paedophiles”.

“During the segment, Baron Cohen’s ‘device’ – as part of the false and fraudulent routine – indeed does detect Judge Moore as a sex offender and paedophile, thus defaming him.”

Mr Moore had walked away from Baron Cohen after the “device” beeped.

‘Humour is an important medium of legitimate expression’

The former Republican chief justice of Alabama’s Supreme Court lost his 2017 US Senate race amid allegations of sexual misconduct.

Those accusations – which he denies – relate to alleged behaviour towards female teenagers when he was in his 30s.

The panel of appeal court judges said that, while Baron Cohen’s show referenced those allegations, no reasonable person would think the “obviously farcical paedophile-detecting device” actually worked.

They said: “Humour is an important medium of legitimate expression and central to the well-being of individuals, society, and their government.”

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