Ethics, free speech at center of high court case on legislative votes

By Bill Mears, CNN

Washington (CNN) — Michael Carrigan was on the losing side of a public vote that put him at odds with a state ethics commission, but now the Nevada city councilman hopes to win on a larger stage at the U.S. Supreme Court.

The justices Wednesday cautiously debated an unusual free-speech case over the responsibility of public officials to step aside from issues where conflicts of interest may arise. Members of the high court themselves may be directly affected by the outcome, amid a period of increasing national debate over recusal in hot-button political matters.

“Is the vote of a judge in a case like the vote of a legislator? Is that speech?” asked Justice Antonin Scalia. “Because judges are subject to ethical rules which prohibit their participating if there would be, quote, ‘an appearance of impropriety.’ If there’s anything vaguer than that, I can’t imagine what it might be. Can I get out of all that stuff?”

At issue is a whether a state or local legislator’s vote is considered “free speech” that would shield them from a level of enforceable oversight from conflict-of-interest laws.

In the last argument of the current term, the high court was debating whether the state law in question was both overly vague and burdensome, when applied to the discretionary actions of a single legislator.

To read more, visit:  http://www.cnn.com/2011/CRIME/04/27/us.scotus.free.speech/

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