4 - The Government’s Speech and Due Process

Summary

This chapter considers when the government’s speech deprives its targets of life, liberty, or property in violation of the Due Process Clause. It starts with a brief tour of the government’s lies and other falsehoods, illustrating their wide array of audiences, topics, motives, and effects. It then examines the government’s speech that interferes with its listeners’ choices in ways that would violate the Due Process Clause if the government accomplished those same changes through its lawmaking or other regulatory action: examples include law enforcement officers’ lies that coerce their targets’ waiver of constitutional liberties and the government’s lies that deny their targets the ability to exercise reproductive or voting rights. Next, it turns to the expressive harms sometimes inflicted by the government’s speech, investigating whether the government’s speech that shames or humiliates its targets offends due process protections. Finally, it turns fromt the effects of the government's speech to its purposes, exploring whether the Clause limits the government’s speech motivated by its intent to interfere with protected liberties or to inflict injury.