WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court announced on Friday that it will hear arguments in the case of a California man who claims that the First Amendment protects the false promises he made of a path to U.S. citizenship in exchange for money to hundreds of immigrants. The man argues that the First Amendment protects the false promises he made.
Because he enrolled at least 471 immigrants in a fraudulent program of “adult adoption” as a way of obtaining citizenship, Helaman Hansen was found guilty in 2017 of “encouraging or inducing” illegal immigration, in addition to other offenses. This was because Hansen enrolled the immigrants in the program as a way to obtain citizenship. To participate in Hansen’s initiative, immigrants had to pay up to $10,000, which was the maximum fee.
The United States Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, which has its headquarters in San Francisco, decided earlier this year that the regulations that were being challenged were overly broad and violated protected speech.
The attorneys for Hansen were able to convince the appeals court that the laws under which he was convicted constituted a criminalization of expression that is protected by the First Amendment. According to the arguments made by his defense team before the Supreme Court, “the First Amendment protects speech that merely encourages another person to engage in illegal behavior.”
In August, the administration of Vice President Joe Biden filed an appeal of the verdict from the 9th Circuit.
The administration told the court that laws against encouraging or obtaining civil immigration infractions have a particularly long pedigree. “Laws against incentivizing or procuring civil immigration violations have a particularly long pedigree.” “This court recognized more than a century ago, without discussing the First Amendment, that Congress’s power to define the immigration laws goes hand in hand with its ability to prohibit encouraging someone to violate those laws. This court did not discuss the First Amendment in making this recognition.”
The case is brought before the Supreme Court of the United States two years after a dispute of a similar nature resulted in a unanimous opinion overturning the decision of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on a procedural issue that did not address the underlying question regarding the First Amendment. At some point in 2019, the United States Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the case.
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