The Supreme Court will hear arguments today about whether states can make it a crime to lie during a political campaign.

The case comes out of Ohio, where anti-abortion group the Susan B. Anthony List wanted to put up billboards criticizing then-Congressman Steven Driehaus for supporting what they called “taxpayer-funded abortion.”

Driehaus actually supported the Affordable Care Act, and only after President Obama issued an executive order ensuring that the health care exchanges couldn’t use taxpayer money for abortion except in cases of rape, incest, or endangered life of the woman.

Driehaus filed a complaint with the Elections Commission, and the advertising company that own the billboards refused to post the ad. But the Susan B. Anthony List issued a challenge to the Ohio law against false speech, arguing that the government can’t decide what is false speech in the context of an election.

Lower courts dismissed the suit based on the fact that no tangible harm had been done to the Susan B. Anthony List, but the group appealed the ruling to the Supreme Court.

The Court will decide whether laws against false speech during election campaigns violate the First Amendment, but must first decide whether there must be actual harm done to hear the case in the first place.

Do laws prohibiting false speech during elections chill free speech? Should knowing lies during a political campaign be protected? How can the government and the courts weigh claims of false speech against speculative speech or ambiguous speech?

Guests:

Greg Stohr, Supreme Court reporter for Bloomberg News

Eugene Volokh, Gary T. Schwartz Professor of Law at UCL