CCP
Amicus Brief: Building Industry Assosciation of Washington v. Utter in Support of Petitioner
Rather than straightforwardly applying this portion of the Buckley ruling, the Washington Supreme Court created an impossibly vague standard for state political committee status. While this Court has clearly limited PAC status, with its registration and reporting burdens, to groups whose objective and measureable spending shows their overarching purpose to be electoral advocacy, the court below permitted PAC status to turn on, inter alia, comments in newsletters and emails.
This error is significant, but increasingly common. This Court has never revisited the major purpose test, but it has limited other portions of the Buckley ruling…
Given this Court’s confusing guidance, lower courts have strayed from the clearly-delineated standard articulated in Buckley, and cobbled together a range of vague and unworkable approaches to “the major purpose” requirement. Unless this Court speaks clearly on this subject, standardless and vague PAC status laws will remain in force.
Wisconsin John Doe Investigation
Wall Street Journal: Why I’m Filing a Civil-Rights Lawsuit
Cindy Archer
After much soul-searching, I am filing a civil-rights lawsuit on Wednesday against Nothing could have prepared me for waking up to the shouts of men with battering rams announcing that they were about to break down my door on that morning in 2011. It was so unexpected and frightening that I ran down from my bedroom without clothes on. Panicked by the threatened show of force, I was then humiliated as officers outside the window yelled at me to get dressed and open up. I quickly retrieved clothing and dressed as I unlocked the door.
Agents with weapons drawn swarmed through every part of the house. They barged into the bathroom where my partner was showering. I was told to shut up and sit down. The officers rummaged through drawers, cabinets and closets. Their aggressive assault on my home seemed more appropriate for a dangerous criminal, not a longtime public servant with no criminal history…
What had prompted the raid? My guess: As an adviser to Gov. Walker, I had played a lead role in drafting and implementing public-employee labor reforms that would propel him to the national stage.
Supreme Court
Wall Street Journal: Better Luck Next Year
Editorial Board
We’ll take good news where we can get it from the Supreme Court, and this week there’s reason for cheer in two cases the Justices have agreed to hear next term.
On Tuesday the Court granted certiorari in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, a case that challenges whether government unions may force non-members to pay fees to support collective bargaining. The case offers the opportunity for a decision that could end forced dues payments from all public workers…
The Justices also voted to take up Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, a case they will be hearing for the second time, a rarity at the Court. In 2013 Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority opinion in the first Fisher case stopped short of overturning the Court’s 2003 Grutter v. Bollinger decision allowing racial preferences in higher education. His narrow 7-1 opinion instead required lower courts to subject schools to strict scrutiny when they used racial preferences in admissions.
More Soft Money Hard Law: The Arizona Decision: Constitutional Reasoning Within the Reform Model
Bob Bauer
We see the same structure of reform thought in other areas. Faced with chronic disagreement about the objectives and modes of political reform, reform programs can be built around strenuous claims of public support, reflexive distrust of legislative self-interest, and a resort to mechanisms that would provide for independent, depoliticized decision-making. Campaign finance reformers, for example, call for the President to nominate members of the Federal Election Commission from a list of recommendations made by a bi-partisan list of independent, “distinguished” individuals and for the Commissioners to rely on professional staff judgment in deciding cases. In election administration, there have been calls for depoliticizing the field in part by emphasizing professionalism in appointments and looking to other reform models in which the chief election officers of the state are not elected officials with party allegiances, or defer to those who are not. In Congressional ethics, similar objectives were pursued through the establishment of an independent Office of Congressional Ethics, run by private citizens, that would limit the risks of self-interestedness in the House’s administration of its disciplinary rules.
Free Speech
New York Times: Why Television Is Still King for Campaign Spending
Derek Willis
Presidential campaign staffers like to talk about a digital strategy, and with good reason. But television continues to occupy the vast majority of most campaigns’ budgets. Here’s why: TV reaches 87 percent of Americans 18 and older, according to a new report from Nielsen, which tracks media usage across platforms and devices.
The report suggests that nothing will displace television as the centerpiece of presidential campaign media strategy in 2016. Television-watching adults spent an average of 7.5 hours a day in front of the set during the first three months of this year, according to the Nielsen report, far more time than people spend on their personal computers, smartphones and tablets. And older Americans — among the most dependable voters — watch more television than their younger counterparts.
Independent Groups
CPI: Prison inmate forms super PAC
Carrie Levine
Super PACs have been formed by journalists. By space nerds. Even comedian Stephen Colbert.
Now, for the first time, a super PAC is being masterminded from behind bars.
Adam Savader this week formed Second Chance PAC — it may raise and spend unlimited amounts of money to influence elections — even though Savader himself can’t vote. That’s because Savader is serving a 30-month sentence in federal prison for cyberstalking and extortion after pleading guilty in November 2013 to the crimes.
The Huffington Post: The Problem of Independent Expenditures
Jay Mandle
All of this has created a real conundrum for advocates of a more equal political process. A democratic system requires both equality and free speech. Neither should be sacrificed in the name of the other. The problem is that limiting expenditures in the name of equality does in fact limit free speech. Moreover, setting an expenditure limit would be not only arbitrary but also ineffective. A determined rich person would be able to fund as many opinion outlets as he or she desires by simply endowing family and friends with the requisite funds. Achieving greater political equality by restricting campaign political spending has been rendered inoperative.
IRS
Politico: Double trouble? IRS lawyer now heads Clinton email production
Rachael Bade
“The person in charge of document production at two different places on two different scandals has not been completely straightforward with us,” said Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), a top IRS and Benghazi investigator, in an interview. “She was at the IRS when there was a preservation order and subpoena — and documents were destroyed. She is now at the State Department, where we were supposed to get [certain] information, and we know that some of the emails were not given.”
Duval, a former attorney for the powerhouse Washington law firm Williams & Connolly who left the IRS and joined the State Department last August, declined to comment for this story. But she told House Oversight investigators last year that she didn’t know such backup tapes of the lost Lerner emails — recently found destroyed — even existed. And while she was leading the document production effort, she also gave a preservation order to all employees.
The State Department defended her work and accused Republicans of smearing a government bureaucrat with a personal attack.
Chronicle of Philanthropy: IRS Plans to Begin Releasing Electronic Nonprofit Tax Forms Next Year
Suzanne Perry
The Internal Revenue Service said today it is working on a technology that should allow it to release electronic versions of Form 990 tax filings by early 2016, a move that would make it far easier for the public to search for information about nonprofit finances and operations.
Newsweek: How Dark Money Shields Political Donors
Karoli Kuns
It is also a story about the unbridled freedom given to political nonprofits in the absence of campaign-finance laws or Internal Revenue Service rules regulating disclosure.
In late 2013, after years of consideration, the Internal Revenue Service proposed a rule regarding the political activity of social welfare organizations classified by the agency as 501(c)(4) organizations: If tax-exempt organizations engage in direct campaign activity, they must disclose the identity of donors funding that activity in a format similar to what is required of political action committees…
While liberal advocacy groups had pushed for rules on campaign financing and “dark money”—political contributions from undisclosed sources—conservatives manufactured a crisis to pressure IRS Commissioner John Koskinen into delaying a transparency rule that would apply to dark money in the 2016 election cycle.
Candidates and Campaigns
Mother Jones: Did Jeb Bush’s Campaign and Super-PAC Cross the Line on Coordination?
Russ Choma
Murphy indicated that Bush and Right to Rise officials had intensive conversations about how the super-PAC would support the official campaign following Bush’s announcement. He noted the Right to Rise had already shot video footage of Bush to use in videos and political ads. “We’re going to be the first super-PAC to really be able to do just positive advertising, to tell his story, which is the missing ingredient right now,” Murphy told the donors. After Bush declared his candidacy, the super-PAC released its first digital ad on YouTube, featuring chirpy music and snappy animated text, lauding Bush’s success and describing itself as an “independent, transparent organization…Our goal is to show you Jeb’s heart.”
The Hill: Sanders: US campaign finance ‘a national disgrace’
Jordain Carney
“Elections should be determined by who has the best ideas, not who can hustle the most money from the rich and powerful,” Sanders, who is running for the Democratic presidential nomination, said in a statement Tuesday. “Unless we end this disastrous campaign finance system, our government will continue to represent the interests of the few at the expense of the many…”
Ahead of his statement, Sanders sent an email to supporters asking for $3 donations, noting that his campaign has received more than 200,000 donations so far.
The States
The Arizona Republic: Appeals court: Scottsdale cannot ban sign walkers
Beth Duckett
A state law passed in 2014 prohibits cities from outright barring sign walkers and the court ruled that the city can’t override that. The law does allow cities to adopt regulations for the sign-toting advertisers.
Scottsdale municipal leaders argued that the sign walkers are an eyesore and a distraction to passing motorists.
Opponents, however, argued that the ban is anti-business and violates their constitutional right to free speech.
