Court at odds with speech protections

7/1/07
Individually, two cases decided last week by the U.S. Supreme Court could each be said to have merit. Upholding the right to try to influence voters, even by moneyed interests in the days and weeks before an election, is, to many people, a defensible posture. Similarly, asserting the right of a school district to limit students from promoting the use of illegal drugs is arguably a safe position.
Together, though, the court sent a troubling message. Free speech is to be defended if the speaker has money, but not if the speaker is powerless.
The use of so-called "issue ads," where, in the weeks before an election, a group not directly associated with a campaign will pay for commercials that implicitly support one candidate over another, was banned by a campaign-finance reform law passed in 2002. Rep. Christopher Shays, R-4, was one of two House sponsors of the act.
The High Court, though, overturned that clause, again opening up the airwaves to groups seeking to push one agenda or another without explicitly naming the candidate of choice. By their nature, however, these ads could not be clearer in their purchasers’ preferences.
Until the United States institutes some sort of legitimate public financing of political campaigns, fundraising will play a huge role in running for office. It’s unfortunate that lawmakers spend so much time hitting people up for cash that could be spent tackling the issues they were elected to deal with, but it’s a fact of life.
But to pretend that multimillion-dollar commercial buys constitute free speech is debatable at best. No one is suggesting that anyone be muzzled or not allowed to state his case; the argument is that election laws are clear, and money shouldn’t be the end-all of political debates. Free speech, in this case, is a canard.
In the other case, a high school student was suspended from school for holding up a nonsensical banner on television that seemed to promote the use of marijuana. The court ruled that the principal was justified in the suspension, even though the student was not in school. So where does this student’s right to free speech come in? Apparently, because it is within the school’s purview to discourage the use of illegal drugs, it is allowed to restrict the speech rights of students who defy that goal.
Each decision has its own tortured logic, but taken together, the implication is indefensible. Free speech is to be preserved for people and groups who can afford to buy television advertisements, but not for mischief-making high school students. Average citizens will have to decide where on that spectrum they fall before they put their own speech to the test.