Xavier Alvarez was in good company when he stood up at a public meeting and called himself a wounded war veteran who had received the top military award, the Medal of Honor.
Mr. Alvarez was lying about his medal, his wounds and his military service, but he wasn’t the first man to invent war exploits.
He was, however, one of the first people prosecuted under a 2006 federal law aimed at curbing false claims of military valor.
Concerns that the law improperly limits speech and turns people into criminals for things they say, rather than do, are at the heart of the Supreme Court’s review of his case and the Stolen Valor Act.
Veterans groups have come to the aid of the Obama administration, which calls the law a narrowly crafted effort to protect the system of military awards that was established during the Revolutionary War by Gen. George Washington. The high court will hear the case Wednesday, which is Washington’s 280th birthday.
“They’re committing fraud. They’re impersonating somebody else. They take on attributes of somebody else, attributes of a hero who served honorably,” said Pam Sterner, whose college term paper calling for the law wound up in the hands of members of Congress. “When you do that, impersonating someone else, that’s fraud, not freedom of speech.”
Civil liberties groups, writers, publishers and news media outlets, including the Associated Press, have told the justices they worry the law, and especially the administration’s defense of it, could lead to more attempts by government to regulate speech.
When he established military decorations in 1782, seven years before he was elected as the nation’s first president, Washington himself also prescribed severe military punishment for soldiers who purported to be medal winners but weren’t. Since then, many men have embellished their war records, and some have won special recognition.
It long has been a federal crime to wear unearned medals, but mere claims of being decorated were beyond the reach of law enforcement.
The Stolen Valor Act aimed to solve that problem, and garnered significant support in Congress during a time of war.
“The admiration and respect for the military increased dramatically after 9/11 and the false claims, as well,” said Thomas A. Cottone Jr., a retired FBI agent who investigated phony award cases.
Mr. Alvarez made his claims by way of introducing himself as an elected member of the Three Valleys Municipal Water District in Pomona, Calif. There is nothing to suggest that he received anything in exchange or that listeners especially believed him.
Even Mr. Alvarez’ lawyers acknowledged their client sometimes has trouble telling the truth, but the lies Mr. Alvarez told harmed no one, they said, so what he did couldn’t be considered fraud.
A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco struck down the law as an unconstitutional restraint on free speech and said the government might instead invest in an awards database that would make it harder for people to lay claim to medals they never won. Last month, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver upheld the law in a separate case, saying the First Amendment does not always protect false statements.
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