PEORIA — In responding to a lawsuit filed by a civil rights group earlier this summer regarding a parody Twitter account, an attorney for City Hall denied that state law ostensibly permits such accounts.

In a 24-page response, Jim Sotos, a DuPage County attorney, said the city denies “that Illinois’ provision for false personation of a public official states that it criminalizes only representations made in person.” The response further states it wasn’t clear if Illinois courts have “required as an element of the offense of false personation of a public official that there be an intent to deceive the public that the impersonator is acting in the official capacity of a public official.”

That statement apparently flies in the face of a decision made by State’s Attorney Jerry Brady, who refused to prosecute the account’s creator, Jon Daniel, saying false personation had to be done in person according to state code. It wasn’t illegal, he concluded, to create parody Twitter accounts.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed suit in June on Daniel’s behalf, contending that their client’s First and Fourth Amendment rights were violated when the city embarked on a campaign to first find out who was behind the Twitter account and then on April 15 when authorities raided his home, located at 1220 N. University St.

Named in the suit are Ardis; City Manager Patrick Urich and his assistant, Christopher Setti; Sam Rivera, the city’s chief information officer; former Police Chief Steve Settingsgaard, and detectives James Feehan and Steve Hughes Jr.

Ed Yonhka, a spokesman with the Illinois chapter of the ACLU, said, “We have seen and are reviewing the filing today by the mayor and other officials of the city of Peoria. We continue to look forward to the opportunity to vindicate Mr. Daniel’s rights in a federal court.”

City officials also say they are immune from damages sought by the ACLU because the search of the house as well as the preceding efforts to track down who owned the account were done in “good faith” and the officials in question didn’t knowingly violate Daniel’s constitutional rights.

Daniel wants a judge to declare the city violated his Constitutional rights and to issue an injunction blocking such measures in the future. He also wants unspecified monetary damages for “the unlawful suppression of Mr. Daniel’s freedom of expression and the unlawful detention, arrest, searches and seizures” and for “defendants’ reckless and callous disregard of Mr. Daniel’s Constitutional rights.”

The suit states the account was started March 9 by Daniel and “juxtaposed the mayor’s clean-cut image with a series of tweets conveying in a crude or vulgar manner an exaggerated preoccupation with sex, drugs, and alcohol, and was a satiric form of expression protected by the First Amendment and the Illinois Constitution.”

In the response, Sotos denies that a “reasonable person” would think the account was bogus, and that Daniel “intended to deceive people into believing his Twitter account was actually operated by a representative of the mayor or the mayor himself, and that no reasonable person could conclude such an intent from the contents of the tweets or the Twitter account profile page.”

The incident garnered international attention and criticism of the mayor.

Ardis has consistently maintained he contacted the police in mid-March, pointing out the Twitter account, which had only about 50 followers. He told police he would prosecute and then has said he largely stayed out of the fray as the police investigated, using multiple search warrants to gain information from Twitter, Google and Comcast about the identities of the account owners. But a series of emails obtained by the Journal Star through the Freedom of Information Act shows Ardis was involved in the investigation throughout.

Andy Kravetz can be reached at 686-3283 or akravetz@pjstar.com. Follow him on Twitter @andykravetz.