The Courts
Institute for Justice: Victory for Free Speech in Colorado
By Rek LeCounte
In a ruling that will benefit hundreds of citizens and political groups throughout the state of Colorado, the Colorado Supreme Court today unanimously ruled that pro bono and reduced cost legal services to political organizations cannot be regulated as political “contributions” under Colorado’s campaign finance laws. The ruling in Coloradans for a Better Future v. Campaign Integrity Watchdog ensures that political speakers cannot be hauled into court by their political opponents merely for seeking out legal help navigating Colorado’s complex campaign finance system…
Andy George, a Colorado political consultant who volunteered his time to CBF, said, “Treating pro bono legal services as campaign contributions would have created huge problems for political groups. You would have to attach a value to the services, disclose them to the government, and even then a group like Campaign Integrity Watchdog could still haul you into court simply by saying that you should have disclosed some different value. For groups that don’t have a lot of money to pay lawyers, it would have made it impossible to defend yourself. Thanks to today’s ruling, though, other groups won’t have to go through what CBF went through.”
First Amendment
Washington Post: Episode 16 of the Constitutional podcast: ‘The First Amendment’
By Lillian Cunningham
By the end of World War II, Jehovah’s Witnesses would argue nearly two dozen First Amendment cases at the Supreme Court. Their body of litigation would pressure the court to better define, and elevate, the role of personal liberty protections in American law.
As Sarah Baringer Gordon, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, puts it: Jehovah’s Witnesses “brought into existence a new constitutional world.”
In the penultimate episode of the Constitutional podcast, we examine the fascinating story of how this marginalized group was able to so powerfully transform First Amendment law.
Gordon is a special guest on the episode alongside Julie Silverbrook, executive director of the Constitutional Sources Project.
FEC
Bloomberg: Draft FEC Rules Target Political Ads on Social Media
By Nafeesa Syeed, Gerrit De Vynck, and Naomi Nix
The commission has a working draft of the rules in front of it now, longtime Democratic FEC Commissioner Ellen Weintraub said Monday at a technology conference in Washington, though she divulged few details.
“I’m hoping that we are going to be able move this rule-making forward within this election cycle,” Weintraub, one of five members of the bipartisan FEC commission, said…
The FEC’s draft rules focus narrowly on ads that directly advocate for a particular candidate, rather than the broader threshold some lawmakers have proposed that would require disclosure for ads about any issue of “national legislative importance.”
Separately, Katie Harbath, Facebook Inc.’s global politics and government outreach director, said at the conference that the company will start archiving advertisements from political groups that have to file with the FEC or the Internal Revenue Service for four years. Through the new initiative, users will be able to see how much money is being spent on ads and the demographics of who saw the ads, including age, location and gender, Harbath said.
Washington Examiner: FEC Democrats seek to regulate free tweets, ‘chill political speech’
By Paul Bedard
[A] complaint to the FEC against Illinois Family Action said the tweet of a pro-Kinzler video amounted to a political contribution. The case was made that it wasn’t free because staff had to spend time and effort on the tweet.
But the Republicans – Goodman, Caroline C. Hunter, and Matthew S. Petersen – explained in their memo that there was no violation of FEC rules because the group neither paid Twitter to run its tweet nor received compensation from Kinzler’s campaign to post it.
They warned that if the case led to new regulations, it would potentially affect millions more since Twitter is used to comment on and promote political campaigns.
“Such an approach would create an internal conflict in the commission’s rules, subjected to regulation any unsuspecting person who uses a free Twitter account to send a link to a campaign video,” the GOP memo said…
The three said such a “strained regulatory theory would chill clearly protected political speech, raise serious fair notice concerns and ultimately prove untenable. For these reasons, we voted to find no reason to believe that [Illinois Family Action] made a prohibited corporate contribution when it tweeted a hyperlink to a federal candidate’s campaign video.”
The Media
Freedom of the Press Foundation: 34 arrests, 44 physical attacks, and more chilling numbers from the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker’s first year
By Peter Sterne
In August of last year, Freedom of the Press Foundation – along with Committee to Protect Journalists and two dozen advocacy groups – launched the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, a first-of-its-kind project that aimed to document and count every press freedom violation in the United States…
In 2017, 33 journalists were arrested while doing their jobs. (One journalist was arrested twice, making a total of 34 arrests.) Of all the the arrests in 2017, 88% occurred at protests and rallies…
In all, eight journalists in the U.S. currently face criminal charges…
In total, the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker documented 15 instances of equipment search and seizure by authorities, which includes seizures following an arrest as well as seizures at a border stop…
In 2017, 43 journalists were physically attacked or had their equipment damaged while doing their jobs. (One journalist was attacked on multiple occasions, for a total of 44 attacks.) Many of these reporters were assaulted by violent protesters of varying political stripes, but others were assaulted by law enforcement officers. In two cases, reporters were assaulted by politicians! …
The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker also documented several other categories of press freedom violations, including chilling statements (many by Trump himself), subpoenas, leak prosecutions and more.
The States
Puget Sound Business Journal: Bill to force nonprofits to disclose donor information should be killed
By Paul Guppy
Some lawmakers in Olympia think we have too much freedom of speech.
A bill, cleverly branded the Democracy Is Strengthened by Casting Light On Spending in Elections or DISCLOSE Act, (SB 5991/HB 2455) would, for the first time, impose state monitoring of certain activities by nonprofit charities. Sponsors of the bill want to expand state power over public speech and civic engagement by requiring certain nonprofits to report sensitive personal information about their donors.
A state agency, the Public Disclosure Commission (PDC), would then release this personal information on the internet.
If deemed to be engaged in expressing political views, nonprofit organizations would be required to file regular reports with the PDC that provide personal identifying information about their contributors…
Bill sponsors say they want to bring transparency and sunshine to politics. But transparency is for government, so officials can be held accountable, not citizens engaged in our democracy. Privacy is for individuals, so all of us can support causes we believe in without fear of harassment.
It doesn’t create “sunshine” when a state agency threatens to post your personal information online, based on the charities and causes you may choose to support.
Rapid City Journal: Government ethics measure approved to appear on 2018 ballot
By Associated Press
The newly dubbed Constitutional Amendment W would tighten campaign finance and lobbying restrictions. It also would create an independent ethics commission and prevent the Legislature from altering or rejecting laws approved by voters without returning to the ballot.
Other provisions would replace a voter-imposed ethics overhaul called Initiated Measure 22, which South Dakota lawmakers repealed this year…
The new amendment would create a seven-member state government accountability board with broad powers to serve as a citizen ethics commission. It would require lawmakers to put $389,000 annually indexed to inflation into a fund administered by the board.
The panel would investigate allegations of corruption and violations of lobbying, campaign finance and government ethics regulations. It would also have the authority to conduct audits of disclosures including for lobbying and campaign finance and impose sanctions such as fines on public officials.
The new amendment would also lower campaign donation limits. For example, it would decrease the contribution limit for a state representative from $1,000 a year from individuals to $500 per election cycle. It would ban donations from corporations and labor unions to candidates or political parties. It also would bar gifts from lobbyists to many public officials.
Maine Sun Journal: Cutler Files case may provide precedent for ethics complaint about Maine Examiner
By Steve Collins
A 2010 case in which Maine’s ethics commission slapped a $200 fine on the purveyor of a politically oriented website cloaked in anonymity suddenly seems relevant again.
As Democrats and Republicans clash over the secretive Maine Examiner online site that helped contribute to the defeat of a Lewiston Democrat in last month’s mayoral runoff, a court’s ruling in the earlier case appears to address some of the issues at stake in the showdown.
Dennis Bailey, whose controversial “Cutler Files” website drew attention after independent gubernatorial hopeful Eliot Cutler filed an ethics complaint about it eight years ago, said Thursday, “Jeez, maybe we started a trend or something. That was never the intent.”
Zachary Heiden, the legal director for the Maine ACLU, said there is a key difference between Bailey’s case, which he argued in an unsuccessful appeal, and what appears to have occurred with the Maine Examiner.
In the Cutler Files case, he said, Bailey was an individual acting on his own to provide truthful information that no one ever disputed.
With the Maine Examiner, Heiden said, it appears the Maine GOP tried “to pretend to be private individuals” engaging in free speech when they were actually political operatives.
Blue Virginia: A Deal with the Devil on Campaign Finance Reform?
By Josh Stanfield
Why would a Republican-stacked, questionably legitimate House Rules Committee report to the floor a radical campaign finance reform bill – without recommendation?
That’s the question I asked myself Friday evening. Speaker Cox has indicated he sees the Rules Committee as a “sort of traffic cop,” mulling over bills with experienced eyes then sending them to the appropriate committees. That’s what the Rules Committee did on Friday to HB 5, HB 7, and HB 122, bills prohibiting the personal use of campaign funds and establishing penalties, by referring them to the Committee on Privileges and Elections.
But then came HB 263, sponsored by Democratic Delegate Marcus Simon, which establishes the Virginia Democracy Voucher Program. This program essentially creates an optional system of publicly funded elections. Speaker Cox and every Republican, joined by Democratic Delegates Plum, Carr, and Bagby, voted to report the bill to the floor without recommendation…
Governor Northam ran on the relatively radical notion of banning contributions from all corporations and capping individual contributions. A more incremental, pragmatic approach is to selectively ban contributions from public service corporations (HB 562) – legislation supported by over 50 candidates and incumbents in 2017.
