The Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear Project Veritas’s First Amendment challenge to an Oregon law that restricts people’s ability to secretly record others, allowing the law to stand.
Project Veritas, a conservative group that films undercover videos to embarrass mainstream media and liberal organizations, contended that lower courts used too lenient a constitutional test in upholding the law.
As is typical, the justices refused to hear the group’s appeal in a brief order without explanation or noted dissents.
The announcement came on the first day of the Supreme Court’s new term, which is already filled with major battles over race, LGBTQ rights and President Trump’s second-term agenda. The justices considered Project Veritas’s petition at their opening, private conference last week alongside hundreds of others that had piled up over the summer recess.
Project Veritas called Oregon as a “dystopia” in its Supreme Court petition, describing secret audio recordings as “today’s most powerful reporting tools.”
“This ensures scandals, abuses, and historic moments vanish into silence or staged fakery,” the group wrote of Oregon’s law.
“Oregon is a place where a smartphone cannot capture candid conversations revealing the corrupt machinery behind closed-door government manipulation, or about a spontaneous act of political violence—such moments are simply erased by law,” it continued.
Oregon’s law criminalizes making audio recordings unless all parties are notified, with some exceptions, like during conversations with on-duty law enforcement and during felonies that endanger human life.
Violations can result in a misdemeanor charge that carries a sentence of up to 364 days in jail and a $6,250 fine.
A federal judge dismissed Project Veritas’s lawsuit, but a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel reversed the decision and invalidated the law. Then, the full 9th Circuit overruled the panel and found Oregon’s statute constitutional, prompting Project Veritas’ high court appeal.
At the core of the dispute was how stringent a First Amendment test to apply.
The judges that upheld Oregon’s law found it was “content neutral” and only needed to clear a standard known as intermediate scrutiny.
Project Veritas asserted the law is “content based,” arguing one must examine the content of a recording to determine if it falls under one of Oregon’s exceptions.
The Supreme Court has held such laws to a higher legal bar known as strict scrutiny. To comply with the First Amendment, Oregon would then need to show that its law advances a compelling governmental interest and is narrowly tailored to achieve that aim.
The state points to an interest in protecting its citizens’ privacy. It urged the high court to let its law stand, arguing it was constitutional and didn’t merit the justices’ attention.
“A person who is willing to speak in one context—an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, a confessional booth, a hushed conversation with a close friend on a park bench—does not necessarily want the statement preserved in perpetuity so that it can be shared with others,” the state wrote in court filings.