USA v. Xavier Alvarez - Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals

UNITED STATES v. ALVAREZ
11885
content.” United States v. Stevens, 130 S. Ct. 1577, 1584
(2010) (alteration and quotation marks omitted) (quoting Ashcroft
v. ACLU, 535 U.S. 564, 573 (2002)). A content-based
restriction of constitutionally protected speech “can stand
only if it satisfies strict scrutiny,” United States v. Playboy
Ent. Group, Inc., 529 U.S. 803, 813 (2000), meaning that it
“is necessary to serve a compelling state interest and that it is
narrowly drawn to achieve that end,” Perry Educ. Ass’n v.
Perry Local Educators’ Ass’n, 460 U.S. 37, 45 (1983).
But not all speech is entitled to First Amendment protection.
Rather, “[t]here are certain well-defined and narrowly
limited classes of speech, the prevention and punishment of
which has never been thought to raise any Constitutional
problem” because “such utterances are no essential part of
any exposition of ideas, and 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 v. New Hampshire, 315 U.S. 568, 571-
72 (1942). Included among these “classes of speech” are “obscenity,
defamation, fraud, incitement, and speech integral to
criminal conduct.” Stevens, 130 S. Ct. at 1584 (citations omitted);
see also Chaplinsky, 315 U.S. at 572.
“Defamation” as a class of speech falls within the unprotected
category of speech that the Court has referred to as
“false statements of fact.” Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc., 418
U.S. 323, 340 (1974). In Gertz, the Court explained the difference
between false statements of fact and false ideas: “Under
the First Amendment there is no such thing as a false idea.
. . . But there is no constitutional value in false statements of
fact.” Id. at 339-40. It then held that “the erroneous statement
of fact is not worthy of constitutional protection.” Id. at 340.
The Supreme Court has regularly repeated, both inside and
outside of the defamation context, that false statements of fact
are valueless and generally not within the protection of the
First Amendment. See, e.g., BE & K Constr. Co. v. N.L.R.B.,
536 U.S. 516, 531 (2002) (“[F]alse statements [are] unpro-