A pro-life organization that has been fighting an Ohio state election regulation that barred it from publicizing a politician's support for Obamacare and its abortion advocacy has won at the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The ruling Wednesday said the state's "political false-statements laws are content-based restrictions targeting core political speech that are not narrowly tailored to serve the state's admittedly compelling interest in conducting fair elections."
Therefore, the judges said, the laws are unconstitutional.
The case already has been before the U.S. Supreme Court, which determined that the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List group had standing to challenge the state laws.
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The group wanted to publicize the support for Obamacare by then-Rep. Steve Driehaus, a Democrat. SBA List said it was alarmed by the abortion funding in Obamacare, and Driehaus also said he opposed abortion funding but voted for the bill anyway. SBA List wanted to point that out.
Driehaus contended there was no abortion funding in the law.
SBA List was prevented from countering Driehaus' view by the threat of prosecution under Ohio's false-statement law.
Driehaus lost his re-election bid anyway and later sued SBA List for defamation and loss of livelihood. But the case apparently was resolved when the 6th Circuit said his defamation complaint failed because the claim wasn't false.
That ruling said: "Given the debate prior to passage of the PPACA as to whether it includes taxpayer funding for abortion, the gist or sting of the statements appears to have at least some truth, to be substantially true, or to be subject to differing interpretations. Driehaus vocally opposed the PPACA because of his concerns about federal funding for abortions but he then voted for it anyway despite the absence of his desired language (the Stupak-Pitts Amendment) in the final version. The executive order adds language, but is not part of the PPACA and does not alter the statutory text. In fact, debate continues over the meaning and effect of the PPACA … For SBA List to overcome Driehaus's defamation claim, it is enough that the statements had some truth, were substantially true, or were subject to differing interpretations. Driehaus's own change of position demonstrates that they were."
Since then, it's become clear that Obamacare funds abortion. In fact, the government is in court fighting for its authority to force even Catholic nuns to fund abortion pills.
Casey Mattox, senior counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom, said the First Amendment "forbids government from acting as a 'truth commission' on matters of public debate."
"The 6th Circuit understood that this type of government intrusion has no place under the Constitution," he said. "The court was right to affirm, as the district court did, the freedom of Susan B. Anthony List and all the people of Ohio to speak in accordance with their views."
It was after the Supreme Court ruled SBA List had standing that a district court judge in 2014 ruled the Ohio statute unconstitutional. But the state claimed the right to censor ads and appealed.
WND reported the lower court's decision. Ohio District Judge Timothy Black found that Ohio could not issue judgments on what is true or false in political campaigns.
The Alliance Defending Freedom and Life Legal Defense Foundation have said: "Five years into Obamacare, it is now evident that SBA List's warnings were true. This law is forcing Americans to pay for abortions in numerous ways, and SBA List had a right to say so."
The appeals court on Wednesday noted that the regulation impacted all false speech regarding a political candidate, even if it is not material, negative or damaging.
WND reported when the fight for free speech drew in the left-leaning American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio, even though the issue was speech against abortion.
The ACLU said then: "Ohio's political false-statement statute … presents a clear facial violation of the First Amendment. The First Amendment protects free political expression foremost among all areas of speech. American self-governance requires that the public be well-informed not only in facts, but in the broad range of political opinions present in the marketplace of ideas. Restrictions on political speech must therefore be regarded with particular suspicion."
The appeals court explained how Ohio's provision threatened political activists with up to six months in prison or a fine of up to $5,000 for violating the "truth law."
The panel noted that the U.S. Supreme Court has rejected the "categorical rule … that false statements receive no First Amendment protection."
"Political speech is at the core of First Amendment protections," the court said. "Though combining protected speech with unprotected speech does not afford the speaker absolute immunity for lies … 'the power to proscribe [speech] on the basis of one content element … does not entail the power to proscribe it on the basis of other content elements. … Even false speech receives some constitutional protection."
The opinion noted the state's interest in fair elections.
"But Ohio's laws do not meet the second requirement: being narrowly tailored to protect the integrity of Ohio's elections. … Ohio's laws do not pass constitutional muster because they are not narrowly tailored in their (1) timing, (2) lack of a screening processes for frivolous complaints, (3) application to non-material statements, (4) application to commercial intermediaries, and (5) over-inclusiveness and under-inclusiveness."
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