Rumors of War Medals: The First Amendment May Protect Lying About Military Awards

"There is much irony," wrote U.S. District Judge
Robert E. Blackburn, "that the core values of our
system of governance, which our military men and
women served to defend with their very lives, are
here invoked to protect false claims of entitlement."
Illustration by Viktor Koen

Posted Jul 1, 2011 2:00 AM CST
By David L. Hudson Jr.

At a 2007 meeting of a municipal California water board, member Xavier Alvarez of Pomona was asked to say a few words about himself. “I’m a retired Marine of 25 years,” he reportedly told the Three Valleys board. “I retired in the year 2001. Back in 1987, I was awarded the congressional Medal of Honor. I got wounded many times by the same guy. I’m still around.”

The last sentence was correct. The rest was nothing but “a series of bizarre lies,” said Judge Milan D. Smith Jr. of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at San Francisco. Alvarez was never shot in battle and never won the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest military award. In fact, he never even was a Marine.
After the FBI listened to a recording of the district board meeting, Alvarez was indicted on two counts of violating the federal Stolen Valor Act. Signed into law in 2006 by President George W. Bush, the statute prohibits false statements about receiving “any decoration or medal authorized by Congress for the armed forces of the United States” or “service medals or badges.” Violators can receive up to a six-month jail sentence, which can be expanded to a year if the lying concerns special awards for bravery, such as the Medal of Honor, Silver Star or Purple Heart.

Alvarez pleaded guilty with the right to appeal, and in August 2010 a panel of the 9th Circuit ruled 2-1 that the law violated the First Amendment.

“The right to speak and write whatever one chooses —including, to some degree, worthless, offensive and demonstrable untruths—without cowering in fear of a powerful government is, in our view, an essential component of the protection afforded by the First Amendment,” wrote Judge Smith, adding: “The greatest damage done seems to be to the reputations of the liars themselves.”
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