Bond v. Floyd

Warren also rejected Georgia's claim that a state can apply a stricter standard of conduct to legislators than to other citizens. Warren first argued that Bond's statements did not violate the law. He then rejected the claim that a legislator's freedom of speech can, under the U. S. Constitution, be any less than that of everyone else.

Warren asserted that a legislator's very function requires maximum freedom of speech. "The manifest function of the Amendment in a representative government requires that legislators be given the widest latitude to express their views on issues of policy." Warren referred to New York Times v. Sullivan, (1964). In that decision, the Court had stated that "debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide-open." Surely, legislators have as much First Amendment protection as other citizens.

Legislators have an obligation to take positions on controversial political questions so that their constituents can be fully informed by them, and be better able to assess their qualifications for office; also so they may be represented in governmental debates by the person they have elected to represent them.

In its decisions during the 1960s, the Supreme Court made freedom of speech an absolute right. Chief Justice Warren did not explicitly overrule earlier Supreme Court decisions. Nevertheless, Bond affirmed free speech claims in circumstances in which the Court previously had denied such claims. It is striking that the Court protected Bond's expressions of sympathy for draft resisters while the nation was engaged in military conflict. In 1919, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes had upheld Eugene Debs's imprisonment (Debs v. United States) for statements almost identical to those Bond made nearly 50 years later.