Do You Have a Constitutional Right to Defame? Texas Supreme Court Considers

The Texas Supreme Court took up two cases this week on whether injunctions in defamation cases are constitutional: "Treading the gray area between freedom of speech and permissible government censorship, the Texas Supreme Court heard arguments in two cases Thursday that could determine whether state judges may permanently ban people from repeating information found to be false and defamatory," the Austin American-Statesman reports.

I reviewed the oral arguments, and one issue that came up is whether there is a constitutional right to defamatory speech under the Texas Constitution. One of the proponents for the constitutionality of post-judgment injunctions banning someone from repeating false and defamatory statements said that defamatory speech has no constitutional protection. But his opponent argued the Texas Constitution provides more protection than the U.S. Constitution for freedom of speech and that defamatory speech does have constitutional protection in Texas. If there is constitutional protection under state constitutional law , then a post-judgment injunction would be illegal and damages would be the only remedy for the parties who were defamed.