In the News

Daily Caller: Liberals’ Latest Effort To Resist Citizens United

By John Ryder

In 2016, Multnomah County, Oregon, passed, and voters approved, a measure which created contribution limits, expenditure limits, registration requirements, and disclosure requirements for spending related to county races. The expenditure limits provide that individuals and entities may only spend money if the money was collected subject to the contribution limits.

The new rules also limit aggregate independent expenditures per election cycle for individuals and political committees, impose no independent expenditure limits on small donor committees, and completely prohibit independent expenditures by all other entities, including corporations and non-profit organizations.

The primary problem with this misguided effort restricting constitutional rights of political speech is that it ignores not only Citizens United but also 40 years of settled campaign finance case law…

Multnomah County filed a petition for validation of the rule in Oregon state court in May. The Taxpayers Association of Oregon, represented by the Center for Competitive Politics, is seeking to intervene in the case and has masterfully outlined the legal problems with new rules and with the rule’s supporters’ arguments.

Free Speech

Washington Post: ‘No Free Speech for Fascists’ is impossible

By Eugene Volokh

On the other hand, “no free speech for those whom the government decides to label ‘fascists'” – now that’s possible. (Unconstitutional, but possible.)

New York Times: The A.C.L.U. Needs to Rethink Free Speech

By K-Sue Park

After the A.C.L.U. was excoriated for its stance, it responded that “preventing the government from controlling speech is absolutely necessary to the promotion of equality.” Of course that’s true. The hope is that by successfully defending hate groups, its legal victories will fortify free-speech rights across the board: A rising tide lifts all boats, as it goes…

I volunteered with the A.C.L.U. as a law student in 2011, and I respect much of its work. But it should rethink how it understands free speech…

Most obviously, the power of speech remains proportional to wealth in this country, despite the growth of social media. When the Supreme Court did consider the impact of money on speech in Citizens United, it enabled corporations to translate wealth into direct political power. The A.C.L.U. wrongly supported this devastating ruling on First Amendment grounds…

The A.C.L.U. needs a more contextual, creative advocacy when it comes to how it defends the freedom of speech. The group should imagine a holistic picture of how speech rights are under attack right now, not focus on only First Amendment case law. It must research how new threats to speech are connected to one another and to right-wing power.

Los Angeles Times: Speech in America is fast, cheap and out of control

By Richard L. Hasen

The rise of what we might call “cheap speech” has, however, fundamentally altered both how we communicate and the nature of our politics, endangering the health of our democracy…

As Trump’s presidency should make obvious, we do not want the government to have the power to ban speech it dislikes – what the White House considers “fake news.” 1st Amendment protections rightfully would prevent such legislation, anyway.

Still, in the era of cheap speech, some shifts in 1st Amendment doctrine seem desirable to assist citizens in ascertaining the truth. The courts should not stand in the way of possible future laws aimed at requiring social media sites to identify and police false political advertising, for instance…

Of course a new conservative Supreme Court is more likely to make things worse than better. It might hold, for example, that it violates the 1st Amendment to bar fake campaign news distributed over social media by foreign governments. Or it might strike down laws that help voters figure out who is paying for political activity (under the dubious argument that transparency measures violate a right to anonymity).

Corporate Speech

The Atlantic: When Corporations Are Good Citizens

By Garrett Epps

In a society where civil society groups-churches, universities, civic groups, and unions-sometimes seem enfeebled, corporate voices have made a difference.

Those facts provide a moment to rethink quietly one of the key ideas that floats around among the progressive community-that corporations are anti-democratic, and that they should be stripped of their constitutional rights…

Consider the “People’s Rights Amendment” offered by Free Speech for People, one of the major groups seeking an amendment to roll back Citizens United: “The words people, person, or citizen as used in this Constitution do not include corporations, limited liability companies or other corporate entities…” Move to Amend, another progressive group, proposes inserting this constitutional language: “Artificial entities established by the laws of any State, the United States, or any foreign state shall have no rights under this Constitution and are subject to regulation by the People, through Federal, State, or local law.”

It sounds good. But there’s a problem: If the protections of the First Amendment didn’t apply to corporations, the CEOs of the dissenting companies above would be opening their companies to legal, open retaliation by the government…

The Courts

New York Times: The Justice Department Goes Fishing in DreamHost Case

By Editorial Board

This is a dangerous way for any Justice Department to conduct an investigation, especially one involving political speech and association, activities that enjoy the First Amendment’s strongest protections. As the Supreme Court said in a 1958 case, the “inviolability of privacy in group association may in many circumstances be indispensable to preservation of freedom of association, particularly where a group espouses dissident beliefs.” Sweeps like this have the potential to be even more chilling to speech when conducted under a thin-skinned president like Donald Trump, who has already made his intolerance of protest clear.

By forcing the government to defend this data sweep, DreamHost is doing an important service not only to its users, but also to the public at large. Prosecutors know that most companies don’t have the resources to fight such warrants, so a common tactic is to overreach and then wait for pushback. If the site or service provider folds and turns over the requested data, any constitutional violation may not be revealed until years later, when a diligent defense lawyer is challenging a conviction in a single criminal case. That’s a bad recipe for protecting all Americans’ right to freely associate, and to be free of unreasonable government intrusion, in the digital age.

The States

KUOW Seattle: About those ‘democracy vouchers.’ They didn’t work for everyone

By David Hyde

Hisam Goueli, a candidate for Seattle City Council Position 8, says the new voucher system is broken and lead to “frustration and tears” for his campaign. Although he received nearly $20,000, the money arrived the day before the primary election.

Goueli saw the program as a great opportunity for a first-time candidate like himself to run a competitive campaign… 

But Goueli says that dream turned into a total nightmare, when he and his campaign manager ended up spending “four or five hours each day trying to get the democracy voucher program working.”

To qualify, a candidate needed 400 backers. After asking for a voter’s support, Goueli says he also needed to ask for $10 and their signatures to qualify. Finally, he had to ask for the democracy vouchers themselves…
Goueli says linking the different steps was the problem: He could have easily gotten 400 signatures and 400 donations.   

In contrast, Goueli argues the candidates in his race who took advantage of the program were the two who already had large political organizations backing them: Jon Grant and Teresa Mosqueda.

Seattle Times: Seattle candidate accused of defrauding first-in-nation democracy-voucher program

By Bob Young

Seattle police are investigating a City Council campaign after an allegation that it tried to defraud Seattle’s first-in-the-nation, taxpayer-funded “democracy voucher” program.

The police inquiry comes after a former campaign manager for Sheley Secrest went to city elections officials to accuse Secrest of putting her own money into the campaign and claiming it was donated by Seattle voters.

The Seattle Times reached five of those voters. All five said they did not give money to Secrest…

If the allegations are substantiated, they could deeply bruise Seattle’s novel program, approved by voters in 2015 to give grass-roots candidates a better chance against well-funded campaigns…

The five purported contributors contacted by The Seattle Times said they were approached at the June 23 Trans Pride parade by Secrest or a white man who was working for the campaign. They said they did not recall being asked for contributions, just signatures.

Washington Post: Under new public finance law, Montgomery candidates change fundraising tactics

By Rachel Siegel

Two candidates – longtime members of Montgomery’s political establishment – have already qualified for matching funds: at-large council members George L. Leventhal (D) and Hans Riemer (D).

Leventhal said his campaign received an initial distribution of matching funds of just under $200,000 and has filed to request a second installment of nearly $13,000…

“I’m sitting on a bank balance of $200,000,” Leventhal said. “If I was raising money the old way, I don’t know that I would have raised $200,000 by now.”…

Peter Fosselman, a Democratic candidate for District 1, said he decided against the public finance program because he doesn’t believe the county is in a financial position to fund private campaigns.

Los Angeles Times: Campaign finance agency lifts contribution limit to Democratic state Sen. Josh Newman as he fights off recall threat

By Patrick McGreevy

The state campaign watchdog agency voted Thursday to lift limits on contributions from elected officials to candidates facing recalls, boosting Sen. Josh Newman’s effort to fend off a campaign to remove him from office for voting for a gas-tax increase.

The 3-1 vote by the state Fair Political Practices Commission rejects an initial opinion by its attorneys that supported past advice letters declaring that legislators can give no more than $4,400 to colleagues fighting recalls.
The Democratic Senate Caucus, of which Newman, a Fullerton lawmaker, is a member, requested the change… 

Commissioner Allison Hayward said the limit on the contributions is not supported by regulations and is unfair because there is no limit on contributions to campaigns to recall officials.

“What we’ve got right now is a situation where there is a restriction on one side of an essentially bilateral battle … that doesn’t apply to the other side,” Hayward said. “It’s pretty clear to me that, at least at the U.S. Supreme Court, such imbalances just can’t be tolerated.”

South Dakota Public Broadcasting: Groups Says They’re Halfway To Placing Anti-Corruption Amendment On Ballot

By Lee Strubinger

The group backing a ballot measure question similar to Initiated Measure 22 says they have over half of the signatures needed to make the ballot in next year’s election…

Much like IM 22, the Anti-Corruption Amendment restricts lobbyist gifts to politicians, restricts campaign money and establishes an ethics commission.

If the amendment makes it on the ballot, voter will decide whether or not to put the language into the state’s constitution.