Supreme Court strikes down Stolen Valor Act

[Sidewinder]

From MSNBC:

High court strikes down Stolen Valor Act

By Tom Curry, msnbc.com National Affairs Writer

Updated at 4:15 pm ET The Supreme Court on Thursday struck down a federal law called the Stolen Valor Act which prohibits a person from falsely claiming that he has been awarded a military honor.

The case involved Xavier Alvarez who was an elected member of the Three Valleys Municipal Water District Board in Pomona, California.

In 2007 Alvarez said at a public water district board meeting that he was a retired Marine, had been “wounded many times,” and had been “awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor” in 1987.

In fact, he never served in the United States armed forces.

Alvarez pleaded guilty to violating the Stolen Valor Act, but claimed that his false statements were protected by the First Amendment right of free speech.

The majority opinion by Justice Anthony Kennedy said, “The remedy for speech that is false is speech that is true. This is the ordinary course in a free society.”

Kennedy quoted from the famous dissent by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes in the 1919 Abrams decision: “The best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market.”

Kennedy said, "Some false statements are inevitable if there is to be an open and vigorous expression of views in public and private conversation, expression the First Amendment seeks to guarantee."

Writing a dissent for himself, Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Antonin Scalia, Justice Samuel Alito said a long line of prior court decisions recognized “that the right to free speech does not protect false factual statements that inflict real harm and serve no legitimate interest.”

Alito said, “Legitimate award recipients and their families have expressed the harm they endure when an imposter takes credit for heroic actions that he never performed. One Medal of Honor recipient described the feeling as a ‘slap in the face of veterans who have paid the price and earned their medals.’”

Alito said diluting the effect of military awards “harms the military by hampering its efforts to foster morale and esprit de corps.”

[LaCroix]

So I finally can talk about my navy cross?

I guess it's only fair. When News Stations aren't legally bound to telling the truth, why should common people be?

Next step - strike down libel laws.

[Spoonist]

I disagree with the ruling since lying about a specific deed is not what free speech is about, but I'm from yuroland so I'm biased against the US all-inclusive version of free speech. So in the specific case of Alvarez I think the ruling should be to convict him regarding the Medal of Honor bit.
However from a legal perspective I think that if we are talking about the whole Stolen Valor Act and not just the medal part of it then I agree with the supreme court that it was an unconstitutional act due to its other bits. Specificly the gov selling mil clothes to the public but then trying to limit who could wear them. Or the more specifics in who could say they were in the military, like with mercenary companies etc. Military experience contains a lot more concepts than gov mil.
I find it weird that acts are packages and that the supreme court can't pick & chose from an act, but rather either reject or accept the whole package. Or am I misremembering things there?

[Knife]

Meh, I guess I agree, in so far as people who lie about that sort of thing are usually pretty easy to pick out and mock endlessly for their absurd stories. I guess it falls under, what you say/lie about is deeply offensive to me, but I'm not willing to let you rot in jail over my offense.' type thing for me.

[someone_else]

The majority opinion by Justice Anthony Kennedy said, “The remedy for speech that is false is speech that is true. This is the ordinary course in a free society.”

Cool, so I can tell all the bullshit I want, then correct everything at some random moment before dying and IT WILL BE OK. I'm off to sell real estate in the middle of Florida swamps then.

Did the process end with an "Ego te absolvo a peccatis tuis in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti"? because this is how RCC handles stuff, not a modern society.

Was this judge high? Or is this standard for US?

Meh, I guess I agree, in so far as people who lie about that sort of thing are usually pretty easy to pick out and mock endlessly for their absurd stories. I guess it falls under, what you say/lie about is deeply offensive to me, but I'm not willing to let you rot in jail over my offense.' type thing for me.

Here the issue isn't that this obvious liar goes in jail or not, but that they took down a law that makes you a criminal if you say you have medals when infact you have none.
At least this is what I understood.

[Bakustra]

So I finally can talk about my navy cross?

I guess it's only fair. When News Stations aren't legally bound to telling the truth, why should common people be?

Next step - strike down libel laws.

Libel laws concern civil torts- they are about the civil harm caused by false statements made about people. The Stolen Valor Act is a criminal law. It is quite possible that falsely claiming to have received military decorations is still a tort under the right circumstances- eg if the claim actually harmed someone, like if the claim was a deciding factor in employment, awarding a contract, etc. However, I think that this guy is immune to torts, since allowing people to sue elected officials for lying to get elected would set a very dangerous precedent and curtail the ability of politicians to act freely once elected. That said, there could be test cases to enable civil torts against false claimants of military decorations based on the Alito dissent in the future.

Cool, so I can tell all the bullshit I want, then correct everything at some random moment before dying and IT WILL BE OK. I'm off to sell real estate in the middle of Florida swamps then.

Did the process end with an "Ego te absolvo a peccatis tuis in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti"? because this is how RCC handles stuff, not a modern society.

Was this judge high? Or is this standard for US?

No, you can't, because that is fraud. Lying as part of a business transaction is a crime under most circumstances and almost always a tort. This, however, only caused harm in a more abstract sense that is almost certainly legally indefensible. American legal opinion on free speech has fluctuated back and forth between near-absolute governmental control and near-absolute freedom, but within periods where center-to-left ideas predominate on the Court, generally direct harm must be shown for freedom of speech to be restricted. Secondly, you misunderstand the point of the quotation-it says that the remedy for lies is to show them to be lies, not to throw the liar in jail.

[fgalkin]

How is saying "I have a Medal of Honor" different than saying "I have a Medal of Freedom?" Why is lying about one legal, and the other is not?

The court did the right thing, kicking this retarded military fetishist law down.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin