Ohio AG tells Supreme Court law against false statements is free speech violation

WASHINGTON, March 4 (UPI) -- Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine filed paperwork with the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday claiming that a state election law that blocks politics candidates from making false statements with malice is a free speech violation.

DeWine claims that Ohio law impedes on the Constitution’s guarantee of freedom of speech and that it has a “chilling” impact on both candidates and their opposition. The attorney general’s brief argued that the law “polices not just false speech, but speech that indisputably is protected under the First Amendment.”

The Supreme Court will be hearing a challenge later this spring from a nonprofit group that wanted to place a billboard criticizing former Rep. Steve Driehaus in 2010. Before the ad went up, Driehaus filed a complaint with the Ohio Elections Commission saying the billboard would violate the false statement law.

According to DeWine’s brief: “The speaker is forced to use time and resources responding to the complaint, typically at the exact moment that the campaign is peaking and his time and resources are best used elsewhere.”

“In other words, the state has constructed a process that allows its enforcement mechanisms to be used to extract a cost from those seeking to speak out on elections, right at the most crucial time for that particular type of speech. And if the allegations turn out to be unfounded, there is no possibility of timely remedy.”

[The Columbus Dispatch]