WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court on Monday allowed a challenge to an Ohio law banning lies in political campaigns to move forward, turned back a challenge to a law concerning gun purchases and refused to hear a case about holding high school graduations in churches.

Political Speech

The court ruled unanimously that two advocacy groups could challenge an Ohio law that makes it a crime to knowingly or recklessly make false statements about political candidates that are intended to help elect or defeat them. The first offense could lead to six months in jail and the second could lead to disenfranchisement.

Lower courts dismissed the case, saying the groups seeking to challenge it had not faced imminent harm sufficient to give them standing to sue. Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the court, said the groups "have alleged a credible threat of enforcement" of the law and, therefore, were not barred from pursuing their challenge to it.

The case was brought by Susan B. Anthony List, an anti-abortion group, and Coalition Opposed to Additional Spending and Taxes. Both sought to criticize Steve Driehaus, a Democrat, in what turned out to be his unsuccessful 2010 run for re-election to the House of Representatives. They asserted that his vote in favor of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act could be interpreted as one "for taxpayer-funded abortion."

The Supreme Court took no position on the truth of that statement.

Driehaus filed a complaint against the anti-abortion group with the Ohio Elections Commission, which makes preliminary determinations and can recommend criminal prosecutions. It issued a finding of probable cause that the group violated the law. Driehaus dropped his complaint after he lost the election and before the case had gotten much further.

The federal appeals court in Cincinnati dismissed the groups' suit challenging the law, saying they no longer had anything to worry about. In his opinion reversing that ruling, Thomas said the groups had shown that they intended to repeat their critique of the health law against other candidates and that "the threat of future enforcement of the false statement statute is substantial." That meant, he said, that their lawsuit could move forward.

Gun Sales

By a 5-4 vote, the court allowed a prosecution under a federal law that requires gun buyers to disclose that they are making their purchase for someone else, even if both the straw buyer and the real one are eligible to own guns.

The case involved Bruce Abramski, a former police officer in Virginia who bought a handgun for his uncle, Angel Alvarez, who lived in Pennsylvania. At the gun store, Abramski filled out a federal form indicating that he was buying the gun for himself.

Abramski pleaded guilty to making a false statement but reserved the right to appeal. He was sentenced to five years of probation.

Writing for the majority in a case that divided the court's more liberal members from its more conservative ones, Justice Elena Kagan rejected Abramski's argument that his misstatement had been immaterial because the federal law meant only to make sure that the immediate buyer was eligible to own a gun.

"Abramski's reading would undermine -- indeed, for all important purposes would virtually repeal -- the gun law's core provisions," she wrote, including ones meant to keep firearms out of the wrong hands and to help investigate serious crimes.

Justices Anthony Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor joined the majority opinion.

In dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia noted that it is permissible to buy guns as gifts, for later resale or as raffle prizes. The majority erred, he said, in interpreting the law to make it "a federal crime for one lawful gun owner to buy a gun for another lawful gun owner."

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito and Thomas joined the dissent in the case.

Graduation Ceremonies

The court said it would not hear a case about whether high school graduation ceremonies held in a church violated the First Amendment's prohibition of government establishment of religion.

The court's order gave no reasons. Scalia, joined by Thomas, dissented, saying the court should have heard the case or sent it back to the lower courts for reconsideration in light of the Supreme Court's decision last month allowing prayers at town board meetings.

Scalia said he knew that some might be offended by the religious symbols in a church.

"I can understand that attitude: It parallels my own toward the playing in public of rock music or Stravinsky," he wrote. "And I too am especially annoyed when the intrusion upon my inner peace occurs while I am part of a captive audience, as on a municipal bus or in the waiting room of a public agency."

But that sort of offense, Scalia continued, was not a problem under the First Amendment.

"It is perhaps the job of school officials to prevent hurt feelings at school events," he wrote. "But that is decidedly not the job of the Constitution."

The case arose from graduation ceremonies held by two public high schools in Brookfield, Wis., at Elmbrook Church, an evangelical Christian institution. Administrators said they chose the church for its comfortable seats, air conditioning and ample parking.

A Section on 06/17/2014