Supreme Court strikes down 'Stolen Valor Act'

In a major victory for America's Got Talent con artist Tim Poe, the Supreme Court overturned the "Stolen Valor Act" which made it illegal to lie about earning a military decoration. The Court voted 6-3.

How disappointing!

Details of the ruling:

From NY Times:

A divided Supreme Court on Thursday overturned a federal law that made it a crime to lie about having earned a military decoration, saying that the law was an unconstitutional infringement on free speech.

The case arose from the prosecution of Xavier Alvarez under a 2006 law, the Stolen Valor Act, which made it a crime for a person to falsely claim “to have been awarded any decoration or medal authorized by Congress for the Armed Forces of the United States.”

... a divided three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, reversed the ruling in 2010, asserting that there were some forms of knowingly false speech, like satire, that deserved constitutional protection, and that the law might chill such speech. The panel also asserted that the law was overly broad in allowing prosecution of false speech even when there was no evidence of “bona fide harm.”