A unanimous 6th Circuit panel in the Susan B. Anthony case, on remand from the Supreme Court, has struck down Ohio’s false campaign speech laws as unconstitutional. There was an earlier 6th Circuit case, Pestrak, which had upheld Ohio’s laws, but the panel held it was not bound by that earlier opinion because (1) Ohio’s law had changed since then and (2) Supreme Court decisions, especially in the U.S. v. Alvarez “stolen valor” case, undermined the reasoning of Pestrak.

This result is unsurprising, and I think the right result.  I explored how Alvarez would likely kill a bunch of these laws in A Constitutional Right to Lie in Campaigns and Elections?

Given how much lying there is in the current presidential campaign, I am sure this result will make some people quite sad.  The question is whether there is a government tool to deal with the problem, or the better solution is to let the politicians hash it out. (The article also discusses the role of media fact checkers.)