“The Nation well knows that one of the costs of the First Amendment is that it protects the speech we detest as well as the speech we embrace,” the opinion states. Justices Samuel Anthony Alito, Jr., Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas dissented. Roberts, Jr., concluded, and Justices Breyer and Kagan concurred, that the Act, as presently written, is unconstitutional. Justices Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Chief Justice John G. Under "intermediate scrutiny," the Court balances all competing interests, as opposed to the higher standard of exacting (or "strict") scrutiny, which requires that a law be narrowly tailored to serve a compelling government interest in order to survive a constitutional challenge.Īccording to Kennedy's plurality opinion, the government failed to prove that lying about receiving a medal diminishes the honor it confirms and also creates the appearance that such medals are commonplace. As a result, the Court's opinion simply finds the law unconstitutional with no controlling opinion as to its legal rationale. Breyer and Elena Kagan, concurred in the judgment but applied a lower, "intermediate" standard of review in striking down the statute. “Although the objectives the Government seeks to further by the statute are not without significance, the Court must, and now does, find the Act does not satisfy exacting scrutiny.” “When content-based speech regulation is in question, however, exacting scrutiny is required,” wrote Justice Anthony M. Alvarez that the federal Stolen Valor Act was unconstitutional because of the severe limitations it placed on the First Amendment. Court of Appeals in San Francisco (9th Cir.) in United States v. In a 6-3 decision, the Court affirmed the ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a federal law that criminalizes lying about military medals violates the First Amendment.
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