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Speak Out
Does the First Amendment protect lies?
| In the 1964 Supreme Court case New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, a city commissioner in Montgomery, Ala., sued the New York Times for defamation. The newspaper had recently run a full-page ad accusing him of trying to sabotage Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s campaign for racial integration in the South by arresting him. The Supreme Court sided with the Times, establishing the standard that all statements about the conduct of public officials are protected, even false ones. The only exception is when the statement is made with malice – in other words, when the person making the statement knows it’s a lie and doesn’t care. |
Have you ever told a white lie?
Sometimes we do it to impress – we might tell someone we’re a starter on our school’s baseball team when really we’re just a benchwarmer, or maybe we’ll tell people we met the president when really we were one of several hundred high schoolers whose hand he hurriedly shook at a rally.
Lies are common. But can they be criminal? How about constitutionally protected?
In 2005, Congress passed a law called the Stolen Valor Act. It was intended to combat an increase in people falsely claiming to be military heroes. The law established a system of fines – and even prison terms – for people who falsely claim to have been awarded a medal or decoration by Congress. If people falsely claim they received an extremely distinguished decoration (the Purple Heart or Medal of Honor) they can receive a year in prison.
But now the constitutionality of that law is being challenged in court. The case involves Xavier Alvarez, a California man new to the board of directors for his local conservation group, Three Valleys Municipal Water District. He introduced himself to the group claiming he was a retired Marine of 25 years who was awarded the Medal of Honor. When it was discovered he lied, he was charged with violating the Stolen Valor Act – and found guilty. But a U.S. District Court overturned his conviction, saying the law was a violation of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Last week, the lower court’s decision was affirmed by an appeals court. In his ruling, Chief Judge Alex Kozinski of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals wrote: “If all untruthful speech is unprotected … we could all be made into criminals.” Agreeing with Judge Kozinski, fellow Judge Milan D. Smith wrote that the landmark free-speech case New York Times Co. v. Sullivan – which said all statements about the conduct of public officials, even false ones, are protected unless they are made maliciously – made it clear that lying can sometimes be protected under the First Amendment.
The decision was not unanimous, however. Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain wrote that the appeals court ruling went against four decades of decisions in which the court “has steadfastly instructed that false statements of fact are not protected by the First Amendment.” He pointed to the 1973 case Gerts v. Robert Welch in which an attorney was falsely accused of being a communist because he represented a family suing a law enforcement officer. The attorney sued for libel. The Supreme Court sided with the attorney, saying, “There is no constitutional value in false statements of fact.”
What do you think?
Should lies be considered protected speech? Should people falsely claiming to be military heroes be fined or arrested? Or should lies be protected under the freedom of speech guaranteed by the First Amendment? Do you agree with Judge Kozinski that if lies are unprotected speech, we could all be criminals? Do you agree with Judge O’Scannlain that there is no constitutional value in lying? Join the discussion!
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