Law Commons^™

Ignore The Man Behind The Curtain: On The Government Speech Doctrine And What It Licenses, Mark Strasser

Mark Strasser

While federal and state governments have long been communicating to various audiences in multiple ways in a variety of contexts, the United States Supreme Court has only recently invoked the government speech doctrine to protect certain state acts and policies from First Amendment challenge. The contours of the doctrine are rather fuzzy—there are no clear criteria by which to determine when the government is speaking or what, if anything, the government must be saying in order for the doctrine’s protections to be invoked. This lack of clarity has caused great confusion in the lower courts—judges seem not to know how …