Stolen Valor Act ruled unconstitutional.

[robby]

As I mentioned in the previous thread on this topic:

@robby

…There are two different federal offenses that are being conflated here: impersonating a member of the military and wearing unearned awards.

While I strongly think that both of these deceptions should be against the law (which is currently the case), if we are going to discuss the merits of the laws in question, it would be helpful to discuss the two issues separately.

Allowing people to impersonate members of our Armed Forces could have real national security implications. Just like we have laws prohibiting someone from impersonating a police officer, we have laws prohibiting people from impersonating members of the military. I would think it would be obvious why allowing this (which is what decriminalization equates to) is a bad idea. Marine Corps officer command Marines. U.S. Marines guard the President, military installations, embassies, nuclear weapons, etc. It is a really bad idea to allow fake Marine officers to be running around with impunity.

The other issue is that of wearing unearned medals. This is less of a case of having national security implications and more of a “stolen valor” issue. While I also think that this should be illegal, I will admit that this is somewhat of an emotional reaction. Allowing people to wear unearned medals debases the awards in question, just like counterfeit money debases currency.

The dismissed cases linked to in the OP are even further down the scale, IMHO–in that you simply have people who falsely claimed to have been a veteran, or to falsely claimed to have served in a particular conflict, or to have falsely received a medal, or some combination thereof.

I can see that making a false claim for something that occurred in the past might indeed be protected speech, for all the reasons that have been discussed.

I would have more of problem with someone falsely claiming to be an active-duty servicemember, and would take the most issue with someone actually putting on the uniform of an active-duty servicemember and impersonating a servicemember–like the fake Marine discussed in the earlier thread. In my mind, these actions are little different from someone falsely claiming to be a police officer, or more seriously, actually putting on a police uniform and impersonating a police officer.

As one of the articles linked to in the OP states:

Military fakers across the country have been prosecuted under the act, but Strandlof’s case and the prosecution of Xavier Alvarez in the Central District of California are the only cases based on speech alone.