SCOTUS Rules For Anti-Abortion Group In Case About Campaign Lies
Source: TPM
SAHIL KAPUR JUNE 16, 2014, 10:41 AM EDT
On Monday, the Supreme Court ruled that the anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony List has standing to challenge a state law in Ohio that prohibits false statements about political candidates.
The unanimous ruling, written by Justice Clarence Thomas, says the group demonstrated a "sufficiently imminent injury" and therefore its First Amendment case against the law may move forward. Conservatives including Justice Antonin Scalia have sardonically dubbed it the "Ministry of Truth" statute.
"The question in this case is whether their preenforcement challenge to that law is justiciableand in particular, whether they have alleged a sufficiently imminent injury for the purposes of Article III. We conclude that they have," Thomas wrote for the Court.
In 2010, SBA List sought to put up a billboard accusing then-Rep. Steve Driehaus, a Democrat, of supporting taxpayer-funded abortion by voting for Obamacare. Driehaus complained to state officials, saying it ran afoul of the campaign lies law. Although the state didn't take action, the billboard company refused to put up the ad, which caused SBA List to sue, alleging the law had a chilling effect on its free speech rights.
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Read more: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/supreme-court-susan-b-anthony-campaign-lies
lark
(23,183 posts)despicable as always.
former9thward
(32,121 posts)Are the other five despicable as well?
Orsino
(37,428 posts)You just have to be rich and it's allowed. Poor people get jailed for their lies.
The Magistrate
(95,264 posts)Especially religious types....
onenote
(42,821 posts)would have joined this opinion in a heartbeat.
The Magistrate
(95,264 posts)I repeat; it is nice to see people rear up on their hind legs to fight for the right to lie. It should be thrown in their faces whenever they open mouths that the only honest thing they ever said was telling a judge, "Your Honor, I'm a liar, and please let go on telling lies and deceiving people for personal and political profit." Because the people who filed this are liars, and know they are liars, and know telling the truth would be their doom.
"In searching for truth, a liar has no more part than a counterfeit bill in a bank deposit."
onehandle
(51,122 posts)Nader's court sucks.
former9thward
(32,121 posts)Who appointed Beyer and Ginsberg?
Arkana
(24,347 posts)by telling everyone who would listen that there was no difference between the parties.
former9thward
(32,121 posts)With respect to this decision who cares who put who on the court? Of course your premise is wrong. Nader did not enable anyone. It was Gore who could not get FL Democrats to vote for him.
24601
(3,966 posts)100% correct.
yurbud
(39,405 posts)that is both tired and inaccurate.
VanillaRhapsody
(21,115 posts)Nye Bevan
(25,406 posts)Most campaign claims are not 100% true or false. There are half-truths, statements that are true but misleading, statements that are open to differing interpretations, and so on. The Washington Post fact checker, for example, does not adjudge statements "true" or "false" but awards between one and four "pinnochios" depending on the degree to which they see the statement as misleading.
With such a law in place, whoever gets to decide on whether a political claim is "true" or "false" has an extraordinary amount of power to censor political speech. Imagine a billboard that claimed "Bush Lied Us Into War" being ordered removed because the claimant could not prove the literal truth of this statement.
DesertDiamond
(1,616 posts)"The Bush Administration Lied Us Into War" I think would be defensible. However, in this particular case, I think since the POTUS is responsible for everything done, at least publicly, in his or her name, I think it would stand in court that Bush knew Colin Powell was lying to the public. Colin Powell knew it, so Bush knew it. Or has to answer for being clueless about what was said by a person representing him.
Nye Bevan
(25,406 posts)and ban the ad if they decided that he did not.
OTOH they would have to allow an ad that claimed "We Found WMDs in Iraq" because we actually did. Yes, they were antiquated sarin shells left over from the first Gulf War that posed no threat, but that statement is technically true.
Granting the power to censor disputed political speech in this manner is a clear violation of the First Amendment.
cstanleytech
(26,347 posts)that you cannot knowingly lie in such campaign ads.
That way if its an honest mistake it protects the person making the claim yet it reduces the chance of someone with say the Koch brothers level of cash coming in to post lies in order to smear someone with lies.
DesertDiamond
(1,616 posts)are definitely in the Age of Mappo, where everything is upside down and backwards. We are plunging deeper and deeper into The Rabbit Hole.
former9thward
(32,121 posts)That is why it was not even a close decision. It was unanimous.
Chan790
(20,176 posts)It's clear that she opposed it as a personal decision, as she told her sister-in-law she would come to rue her abortion. That exchange is so straightforward that only the most pretzel logic position could assert it means anything other than what it says.
There's a substantial basis to argue on both sides of the issue...articles that could be interpreted as pro-life but are not explicitly so, her refusal as editor of the The Revolution to run ads for abortifacients, her publication of articles that both argue against having abortions but also against laws prohibiting abortion. Her statements to others including Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Frances Willard seem to infer that she opposed abortion as an oppression of women. Her famous speech, Social Purity. probably provides the best insight into Anthony's position on abortion:
"The prosecutions on our courts for breach of promise, divorce, adultery, bigamy, seduction, rape; the newspaper reports every day of every year of scandals and outrages, of wife murders and paramour shooting, of abortions and infanticides, are perpetual reminders of men's incapacity to cope successfully with this monster evil of society."
That would suggest she opposes abortion as a social evil...she however later in the same speech criticizes legal prohibitions on abortion as a laws written by men to favor men:
"The true relation of the sexes never can be attained until woman is free and equal with man. Neither in the making nor executing of the laws regulating these relations has woman ever had the slightest voice. The statutes for marriage and divorce, for adultery, breach of promise, seduction, rape, bigamy, abortion, infanticideall were made by men."
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Splitting hairs and reading between lines, it's likely that SBA opposed women having abortions (as a moral position, viewing abortion as being a consequence of the oppression of women)...but more strongly opposed laws that restricted autonomy of women. (As a sociopolitical position)
blkmusclmachine
(16,149 posts)happyslug
(14,779 posts)Cha
(297,935 posts)NYC Liberal
(20,138 posts)as long as it's gone.