Federal law prohibits encouraging or inducing unlawful immigration for private financial gain. In March, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case, United States v. Hansen, that asks whether that law unconstitutionally abridges freedom of speech.
The law deserves to die on First Amendment grounds. As the Rutherford Institute and the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression observed in an amicus brief they filed in the case, "expressing disagreement with laws through advocacy of their violation" is "part of a deeply rooted American tradition." That tradition includes abolitionists who urged defiance of pro-slavery statutes and civil rights activists who championed nonviolent resistance to Jim Crow laws. "Criminalizing mere encouragement of unlawful conduct," the brief warned, "would chill speech essential to movements advocating political and social change."
