In the News

Ballot Access News: U.S. Supreme Court Receives Eight Amici Briefs in Opposition to Minnesota’s Ban on Political Clothing, but No Briefs on Minnesota’s Side

By Richard Winger

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear Minnesota Voters Alliance v Mansky, 16-1435, on February 28. This is the case in which the lower courts upheld Minnesota’s ban on political clothing at the polls. Eight organizations have submitted amicus briefs in support of the people who challenged the ban. No amici briefs have been filed in defense of the law.

Anyone may read any of the briefs using this U.S. Supreme Court page. The eight organizations opposed to the ban are: the ACLU, the Southeast Legal Foundation, CATO Institute, the Goldwater Institute, the James Madison Center for Free Speech, the Justice & Freedom Fund, the ACRU, and the Center for Competitive Politics (which has since changed its name to the Institute for Free Speech).

Free Speech 

Richmond Times-Dispatch: If you regulate free speech, who decides what is acceptable?

By A. Barton Hinkle

The greater flaw in the case for controlling what people may say on social media lies in the presumption, as Tufecki puts it, that free speech is merely a “vehicle” for achieving more important aims.

In other words: Your social-media post is permissible only to the extent that it serves somebody else’s goal.

This is wrong – and not because our would-be overseers might pick the wrong goal (although they might). It is wrong because it treats people as means to an end, rather than as an end in themselves. To suggest that individuals have a right to free speech only when it is socially useful horribly misunderstands the entire concept of what it means to have a right at all.

Individual rights don’t need a justification; they are their own justification. Free speech has intrinsic value, regardless of its instrumental value, because it accedes to the dignity and autonomy of the speaker.

The correct question about social media is therefore not what amount of speech people should be permitted to have on it. The correct question is what makes the nation’s would-be censors think they have any say about the matter in the first place.

Citizens United

The Hill: Eight years after Citizens United, it’s time for bold ways to fix democracy

By Liz Kennedy and Alex Tausanovitch

We have written about a series of solutions that have the potential to transform accountability in government and shift power from the privileged few back into the hands of the general public. One of these strong, clear solutions include barring members of Congress from accepting contributions from the interests that they oversee in committee…

We can also increase donor disclosure of money spent on politics, not only so that the American people can “make informed decisions,” in the words of an approving majority in Citizens United, but also to safeguard our national security. This is an imperative that has grown even stronger in the wake of recent revelations that money from the Russian government may have illegally flowed into our last election through the National Rifle Association…

In both the House and the Senate, legislation has been introduced to push back against the undue influence of lobbyists and special interests, enhance donor disclosure, and fight foreign influence in our elections. More such proposals are on the way, awaiting only a leadership with the courage to take on the entrenched status quo.

Lobbying

NBC News: The Mueller effect: FARA filings soar in shadow of Manafort, Flynn probes

By Julia Ainsley, Andrew Lehren, and Anna R. Schecter

The number of first-time filings like SCL Social Limited’s rose 50 percent to 102 between 2016 and 2017, an NBC News analysis found. The number of supplemental filings, which include details about campaign donations, meetings and phone calls more than doubled from 618 to 1,244 last year as lobbyists scrambled to avoid the same fate as some of Trump’s associates and their business partners.

The flood of new filings provides a small window into the long-opaque industry of foreign lobbying in Washington in which money is spent by foreign governments to sway the opinions of the American public and U.S. officials, most often against their adversaries.

The uptick, legal experts say, comes from a new awareness that a failure to disclose overseas political work could lead to federal charges…

In reality, lobbyists say, many American firms have been doing business for foreign governments over the past decade, often creating ad campaigns to promote a specific solution to a humanitarian crisis or organizing events to introduce foreign leaders to U.S. officials. Mueller’s probe into the Trump campaign’s possible collusion with Russia to influence the 2016 presidential election has pulled back the veil on this lucrative industry that has been quietly flourishing in Washington for years.

The Courts

Washington Examiner: Court denies college’s request to dismiss free speech case

By Andrea Fabián-Checkai

On Wednesday, California District Court rejected a motion to dismiss a lawsuit against Los Angeles Pierce College and the Los Angeles Community College District on the grounds of First Amendment violations.

Pierce College is a part of the largest community college district in the United States, the Los Angeles Community College District, yet it provides only .003 percent of its 426-acre campus to exercise free expression. In November 2016, Pierce College student and Young Americans for Liberty member Kevin Shaw was handing out copies of the U.S. Constitution when he was approached by a campus administrator and told he could not distribute literature outside of the free speech zone, a space of approximately 616 square feet. Shaw filed a lawsuit against Los Angeles Community College District with the help of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education and co-counsel Arthur Willner, a partner at Leader & Berkon LLP, on March 28, 2017…

Since the motion to dismiss was pre-discovery and was rejected, now the case will move into discovery and proceed forward.

Independent Groups

New York Times: Is This the Collusion We Were Waiting For?

By Michelle Goldberg

Norman Eisen, Barack Obama’s White House ethics czar, tweeted: “this could well be the collusion we have been waiting for, prosecutable as possible campaign finance crimes.” …

As McClatchy reported, Erickson – the author of the “Kremlin Connection” email – and Butina set up a limited liability company together in 2016. Erickson told McClatchy that the company was founded to provide Butina with money for her graduate studies, should she need it. That, noted McClatchy, is “an unusual way to use an L.L.C.”

Here’s another way L.L.C.s could be used: as an intermediary between foreign agents and tax-exempt organizations that are not required by law to disclose their donors, often called dark money groups. Indeed, in July the left-leaning Center for American Progress put out a report warning that loopholes in campaign finance laws make it easy for foreign citizens or governments to influence our elections in precisely this way.

The States

Salt Lake Tribune: Special interests gave Utah lawmakers $9 of every $10 in campaign funds they raised

By Lee Davidson

Adam Brown, a political science professor at Brigham Young University, agrees that donations help bring access…

“When you see giving across parties, it supports the claim they are not necessarily buying a vote,” Brown said. “If they [donors] are getting anything for it, it appears to be a chance to make their pitch.”

He added, “I don’t know how many of your readers will believe it, but research backs claims that it’s not swaying [lawmakers’] vote.”

Senate President Wayne Niederhauser, R-Sandy, believes that.

While he says politicians depend on and appreciate donations, “at the end of the day, the legislators are going to be listening to their constituents because they are the ones who vote, the ones who put us into office.” …

Senate Minority Leader Gene Davis, D-Salt Lake City, also said big donors get no extra favors, and most lawmakers listen to all sides on debates.

“I don’t think any of my fellow colleague could be called on the carpet for being in the pocket of special interests,” he said.