The Supreme Court will consider a case about lying in politics, revisiting a fight from Chabot’s 2010 campaign in Ohio. (Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call File Photo)

The Supreme Court has made pretty clear that putting your money where your mouth is deserves broad protection as a form of free political speech. The justices are about to consider whether outright lying in a campaign deserves a similar First Amendment shield.

The court’s recent decisions easing the flow of generous campaign contributions already shifted the electoral landscape. If the court finds that even the most patently outrageous statements about candidates may not be barred by law, those two decisions combined could expand the rhetorical battlefield of the midterm elections and raise the attack ad volume as never before.

With Congress in the middle of its spring recess, few if any members are expected to attend the April 22 oral arguments. But they will all surely have their ears tuned for word about the decision, expected by the end of the term in June.

Groups at both ends of the ideological spectrum are challenging an Ohio law, on the books since the 1970s, that forbids candidates, issue groups or anyone else from knowingly or recklessly making false statements about someone on the ballot — whether the untruths are intended to help elect or defeat the candidate. Fifteen other states similarly criminalize “false” political statements, briefs in the case say, but this is the first constitutional challenge against one of those laws that’s made it to the Supreme Court.

The dispute started during one of the hottest House races in the country in 2010

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