USA v. Xavier Alvarez - Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals

UNITED STATES v. ALVAREZ
ancing of the value of the speech against its societal costs” is
“startling and dangerous”). “The First Amendment’s guarantee
of free speech does not extend only to categories of speech
that survive an ad hoc balancing of relative social costs and
benefits.” Id. The language from Chaplinsky, borrowed in
Gertz to establish that false factual statements are “of such
slight social value as a step to truth that any benefit that may
be derived from them is clearly outweighed by the social
interest in order and morality,” Chaplinsky, 315 U.S. at 572,
“do[es] not set forth a test that may be applied as a general
matter to permit the Government to imprison any speaker so
long as his speech is deemed valueless or unnecessary[.]”
Stevens, 130 S. Ct. at 1586. 5
Profanity and deliberately false statements of fact rarely
contribute meaningfully to public debate over important
issues, but
[t]he constitutional right of free expression is powerful
medicine in a society as diverse and populous as
ours. It is designed and intended to remove governmental
restraints from the arena of public discussion,
putting the decision as to what views shall be
voiced largely into the hands of each of us . . . .
. . . We cannot lose sight of the fact that, in what otherwise
might seem a trifling and annoying instance
of individual distasteful abuse of a privilege, these
fundamental societal values are truly implicated.
11859
5 Although the dissent denies the proposed rule would result in ad hoc
balancing, his own analysis shows that it does. See Dissent at p. 11908
(explaining that the Act does not cover speech that matters because “the
harm from public officials outright lying to the public on matters of public
record should be obvious” and that “our public discourse will not be worse
for the loss” caused by chilling “false autobiographical claims by public
officials such as Alvarez”).