On February 24, the Sixth Circuit issued an opinion in Susan B. Anthony List v Driehaus, 14-4008. The opinion agrees with the U.S. District Court that Ohio’s law, making it a crime to knowingly make a false statement about a candidate, violates the First Amendment.

The Sixth Circuit had upheld this law back in 1991, but the new opinion overrides that precedent, based on intervening decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court on free speech. There had also been many other attempts to strike down the law in the 2000’s decade, but they always resulted in a decision that the plaintiffs lacked standing. In this case, earlier the lower courts had also ruled that the plaintiffs lacked standing, but then the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled that the plaintiffs in this case do have standing.