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Law Against Campaign Lies Struck Down

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: October 5, 2007

OLYMPIA, Wash. - A law that bars political candidates from deliberately lying about their opponents is unconstitutional, a sharply divided state Supreme Court ruled Thursday.

Justices in the majority of the 5-4 decision said the 1999 law, already rejected by a lower court, violates free-speech rights.

'The notion that the government, rather than the people, may be the final arbiter of truth in political debate is fundamentally at odds with the First Amendment,' Justice James Johnson wrote.
Dissenting justices called the decision 'an invitation to lie with impunity.'

'The majority opinion advances the efforts of those who would turn political campaigns into contests of the best stratagems of lies and deceit, to the end that honest discourse and honest candidates are lost in the maelstrom,' Justice Barbara Madsen wrote.

State Sen. Tim Sheldon, D-Potlatch, invoked the law in 2002 after his Green Party challenger, Marilou Rickert, distributed a flier that asserted Sheldon voted to shut down a state institution in his district. In fact, he voted against a budget that included closure of the Mission Creek youth camp.

The Associated Press

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