The Supreme Court on Friday rejected a free speech challenge to a longstanding immigration law that makes it a crime to “encourage or induce” a non-citizen to illegally enter or reside in this country .

By a 7-2 vote, t

Judges upheld criminal charges against a Sacramento man who had sued hundreds of immigrants

without documentation

up to $10,000 on the false promise that he could help them become American citizens.

Helaman Hansen was convicted of 15 counts of fraud and two counts of encouraging and inciting illegal immigration “for personal financial gain”. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

But he won a partial acquittal from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which said the word “encourage” could be read broadly to apply to relatives or friends who recommend a non-citizen to come to or stay in this country. to stay.

As a result

the appeals court found that provision too broad because, read literally, it could lure innocent people into a trap.

“We are applying the overbreeding doctrine so that legitimate speech related to immigration law is not cooled and shielded,” the San Francisco-based appeals court said.

But in United States v. Hansen, Supreme Court justices said they wouldn’t stretch the First Amendment to protect criminal behavior from prosecution and punishment.

“Having concluded that this statute criminalizes immigration interests and other protected expressions, the 9th Circuit held it unconstitutionally too broadly under the First Amendment,” Judge Amy Coney Barrett wrote for the majority. “That was a mistake. Interpreted properly, this provision only prohibits the willful solicitation or facilitation of certain unlawful acts. It does not prohibit[t] a substantial amount of protected speech,” let alone enough to warrant throwing out the “downright legitimate sweep” laws.

Judges Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson disagreed.

Attorneys for the Biden administration had urged the court to overturn the 9th Circuit’s ruling in Hansen’s case, saying the law was being used to prosecute smugglers who made money by encouraging migrants to enter this country illegally to come.