Is Lying Protected Speech?

Next month buying airline tickets should become less misleading:

Beginning Jan. 24, the Transportation Department will enforce a rule requiring that any advertised price for air travel include all government taxes and fees. For the last 25 years, the department has allowed airlines and travel agencies to list government-imposed fees separately, resulting in a paragraph of fine print disclaimers about charges that can add 20 percent or more to a ticket’s price.

It seems reasonable to have a more uniform way of advertising ticket prices, since the fees and taxes on air travel aren't as well-known as things like sales tax.

And before anyone gets on their high horse about "government fees," those fees pay for the airport, FAA flight controllers, TSA inspectors, and all the infrastructure that makes it possible for the airlines to do business. Fees on people using government services are preferable to funding them from general revenues, aren't they?

But the fact is, the government fees are actually small potatoes compared to the other fees airlines charge:

Spirit has built its business around advertising $9 fares, then charging additional fees for checked and carry-on bags, advance seat assignments and now a “passenger usage fee” of up to $17 each way for tickets booked online.

Since no one will ever pay $9 to fly on Spirit, advertising a $9 fare is a bald-faced lie. But several airlines are suing to stop the new regulations:

"We think it’s unnecessary and violates the First Amendment," said David Berg, general counsel at Airlines for America. “The D.O.T. simply has not been able to justify that the current advertising is misleading in any way to support a restriction on free speech.”

Does the First Amendment really guarantee companies the right to lie in their advertisements? And now the airlines are saying that the new rule restricts their right to political speech. Are the airlines really saying that "political speech" is lying, and therefore all lies are protected speech?

Spirit has trotted out the hoary old "burdensome consumer protection regulations" argument:

[I]n its S-1 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Spirit cited “burdensome consumer protection regulations” as a risk factor for its business model, saying, “We are evaluating the actions we will be required to take to implement these rules, and we believe it is unlikely that we will be able to meet the 2012 compliance deadline in every respect.”

Apparently, since everyone "knows" that Spirit's $9-fare business model is based on lying, somehow that makes it acceptable. What does that say about business ethics in this country?

A lot of people are outraged by these sorts of government regulations. Their anger would be better directed at the liars and cheats who make these regulations necessary in the first place.