In the News
The 74: Supreme Court Weighs Limits of Censure in Case With Implications for Divisive School Boards
By Linda Jacobson
Legislative bodies, including K-12 school boards, should be able to police their own members and censure is the historical mechanism for doing that, attorneys representing the Houston Community College System argued Tuesday in a hearing before the U.S. Supreme Court.
But censuring a board member for criticism of the board violates that person’s First Amendment rights and has “significant chilling effects,” responded Michael Kimberly, attorney for former trustee David Buren Wilson, who sued the system after he was censured…
David Keating, president of the Institute for Free Speech, which co-authored a “friend of the court” brief in support of Wilson, said even if his behavior was “extremely obnoxious,” the censure crossed the line because it tried to control what he was saying outside of his official duties.
The board of trustees “viewed him as a gadfly, but that doesn’t mean gadflies aren’t right about some things,” Keating said…
Keating added it wasn’t just the trustees’ censure resolution that infringed on Wilson’s rights — it was the additional penalties attached to it. The censure made Wilson ineligible for board officer positions, cut off reimbursements for college-related travel and required him to seek approval before accessing funds in his faculty account…
Keating said a legislative body is akin to a workplace, where there are expectations for behavior. But he added that whether members should be censured for what they say or do outside of official proceedings is a more difficult question.
“This case has enough variables and moving parts that it’s really hard to predict what sort of guidance might come out of this,” he said.
Washington Free Beacon: Social Media Companies Blame COVID for Erroneous Content Removals
By Santi Ruiz
Social media companies still use COVID-19 staff shortages to justify removing content that doesn’t violate platform rules.
Both Twitter and Facebook scaled back human reviews of content in the early days of the pandemic. The companies employ contractors to sift through material that may break their sites’ rules, and said many contractors could not do that work from home. Two years on, both companies blame the effects of COVID-19 for erroneous content removal and the suspension of users’ ability to appeal the censorship of their content…
Institute for Free Speech president David Keating told the Free Beacon that social media platforms should restore an appeals process for removed posts. He also criticized platforms for having a different “set of rules for powerful people,” calling content moderation systems “a black box” for users.
ICYMI
NonProfit Times: First Amendment Landscape
By Bradley A. Smith
The Supreme Court of the United States ruled in July that California could not require charities and other nonprofit organizations to submit an annual list of donors to state officials as a pre-condition for soliciting contributions in the state. The case, known as Americans for Prosperity Foundation v. Bonta (AFPF), should have a substantial, positive impact on charities and the Americans who support them…
The ruling strikes down the policy in California and three other states – Hawaii, New Jersey, and New York. Equally important, however, is that outside of political campaigns, any law or policy broadly requiring the publication of donors, either to the public or to the government, is now highly suspect…
Some specific types of compulsory disclosure laws and proposals that may be more vulnerable to constitutional challenge after AFPF include:
[Ed. note: Click on headline to zoom in on text.]
The Courts
The Hill: Gun control group alleges campaign finance violations in lawsuit against NRA
By Mychael Schnell
The gun control group Giffords filed a lawsuit against the National Rifle Association (NRA) on Tuesday, alleging the advocacy group violated campaign finance laws by illegally contributing tens of millions of dollars to GOP Senate and presidential candidates.
The lawsuit — which was filed by the nonpartisan campaign finance watchdog Campaign Legal Center on behalf of Giffords — alleges that the NRA funneled up to $35 million in illicit contributions to GOP candidates through a number of shell corporations.
Candidates and Campaigns
Roll Call: Senate candidates able to tap their own wealth aim for an edge in primaries
By Bridget Bowman
The 2022 midterms already feature more than two dozen wealthy Senate candidates spending their own money on their campaigns, with several spending in top battleground races, according to recent fundraising reports.
Twenty-eight Senate hopefuls have injected $50,000 or more of their own funds into their races, spending or loaning their campaigns a combined $32.2 million, according to a CQ Roll Call analysis of fundraising reports filed with the Federal Election Commission. The average self-funding Senate candidate had a minimum net worth of at least $12.5 million, according to personal financial disclosure reports filed through this week by 18 of them.
Wealthy candidates have the ability to upend their races, particularly in contested primaries, by spending their own money to reach out to voters and boost name recognition. There are no limits on how much of their own money candidates can contribute or loan to their campaigns, according to FEC guidelines. Most self-funding occurs when candidates make loans to their campaigns, which can eventually be repaid using campaign contributions from other individuals and groups.
Self-funding is not new. Indeed, the all-time top self-funding candidate in a single Senate campaign is Rick Scott, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. The Florida Republican put $63.6 million of his money into winning his seat in 2018, besting the previous record of $60 million set by New Jersey Democrat Jon Corzine in his successful 2000 race, according to OpenSecrets. But Republican Linda McMahon put $50 million into her losing Senate bid in Connecticut in 2010, and another $49 million when she lost again in 2012.
Independent Groups
The Atlantic: The Massive Progressive Dark-Money Group You’ve Never Heard Of
By Emma Green
Over the past half decade, Democrats have quietly pulled ahead of Republicans in so-called dark-money spending, funneling hundreds of millions from anonymous donors into campaigns around the country…
The organization that connects many of these groups—what a critic might call the mothership—is called Arabella Advisors.
Arabella hates this narrative. The organization’s CEO, Sampriti Ganguli, insisted to me that she runs a relatively small business-services organization that does HR, legal compliance, accounting, etc., for clients such as the Sixteen Thirty Fund. Ganguli comes from a consultant background, and she talks like it: Arabella’s mission is to make philanthropy more efficient, effective, and equitable, she told me…
Our conversation has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.
