In the News
Seattle Times: Kickbacks, a lifetime ban and Tom Cruise movies: Inside the attorney general’s case against Tim Eyman
By David Gutman
[Attorney General Bob] Ferguson’s lawsuit against Eyman, first filed in 2017, seeks to bar the longtime anti-tax crusader from “managing, controlling, negotiating or directing financial transactions of any kind for any political committee in the future.”
Eyman says such a punishment would violate his First Amendment rights to free speech and political activity and essentially would bar him from the work that has made him a powerful force in Washington politics for more than 20 years.
On Friday, a Thurston County Superior Court judge will begin to settle the debate: Can the attorney general block Eyman from forever participating in the financial aspects of his political campaigns? Ferguson says such a punishment is “necessary to prevent further illegal conduct by Eyman.”
Eyman has filed for partial summary judgment in the lawsuit, seeking to eliminate the lifetime ban on directing the finances of political campaigns as a possible punishment…
The Institute for Free Speech, a national nonprofit that frequently opposes campaign-finance laws, wants to weigh in on Eyman’s behalf, calling the proposed punishment essentially unprecedented and “inherently dangerous.”
New from the Institute for Free Speech
Round-Up: Responses to Mark Zuckerberg’s Call for More Internet Speech Regulation
By Luke Wachob
Mark Zuckerberg says he has too much power, and you must stop him.
In a March 30th op-ed for The Washington Post, the Facebook CEO and world’s eighth richest man called for “a more active role for governments and regulators… in four areas: harmful content, election integrity, privacy and data portability.”
On Monday, one of Facebook’s top policy executives added in an interview with Axios that Zuckerberg would likely be “making the rounds in Washington” to discuss the ideas in his op-ed with lawmakers. The details may be uncertain, but the signal Zuckerberg is sending is clear: Facebook supports government action to regulate social media.
As one would expect, Zuckerberg’s comments provoked a flood of criticism and debate about the future of free speech online. I’ve compiled some of the more cogent responses below.
The Courts
Courthouse News Service: Cruz Sues Over Limits on Reimbursing Campaign Loans
By Ellen Robinson
Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas filed a lawsuit Monday challenging the Federal Election Commission’s cap on how much money candidates can reimburse themselves for loans to their campaign, claiming it violates his right to free speech.
The federal complaint filed in Washington, D.C., by lead attorney Charles Cooper of Cooper and Kirk states the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act bars political campaigns from using more than $250,000 in money raised after an election to repay a candidate’s personal loans to their own campaign.
Cruz – who narrowly won re-election last November in a race against Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke – contends the cap violates the First Amendment rights of candidates, their campaign committees and donors by restricting their political speech.
He claims the FEC interprets the statute to not only bar the repayment of personal loans guaranteed by a candidate for their campaign, but also restrict the repayment of a candidate’s own money.
The restriction further limits the time period a candidate can raise funds to communicate their political messages, Cruz says.
“Criminalizing the basic means of financing political communication infringes a candidate’s ‘fundamental…right to spend personal loans for campaign speech,” the lawsuit states, citing the 2008 Supreme Court ruling Davis v. FEC. “In addition, the post-election repayment limitation restricts the speech of those potential donors who would otherwise support a candidate financially by contributing after an election to fund pre-election political speech.” …
Cruz is asking a federal judge to grant injunctive relief against the post-election limitations on campaign loan repayments set out by the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, also known as the McCain-Feingold Act.
Center for Responsive Politics: Ted Cruz’s FEC lawsuit could give special interests more power in federal elections
By Karl Evers-Hillstrom
If FEC limits were reversed, a candidate would be free to raise unlimited funds to repay past debts, potentially leading to new campaign finance strategies that could benefit wealthy candidates.
Paul S. Ryan, vice president of policy and litigation at Common Cause, told the Center for Responsive Politics the rules would open up campaigns to further special interest influence, calling post-election personal loan repayments “one of the most corrupting forms of money in politics.” …
Brendan Fischer, director of federal reform at Campaign Legal Center, said these contributions “effectively go straight into” the candidate’s pockets…
Changes to the law could bolster a new strategy of using personal loan debt to the candidate’s advantage.
In July 2018, the Daily Beast reported that Republican Senate candidate Matt Rosendale used personal loan debt from his 2014 House run as a way to effectively skirt contribution limits. Rosendale began raising money to repay the debt in 2018, but any contributions to that effort did not count toward contribution limits for the 2018 cycle.
Eight of nine wealthy donors that helped pay off the debt had already given the maximum $5,400 to Rosendale’s 2018 campaign. After receiving the funds, Rosendale loaned his 2018 campaign more money, effectively creating a cycle of loans and repayments that bypasses traditional contribution limits.
“It allows a candidate to go to hit up a single donor for more than the actual currently applicable campaign contribution limits by asking them to also make contributions to their prior election cycles for loan forgiveness,” Ryan said…
Ryan argued the restrictions are constitutional, noting that under current rules, Cruz could spend as much of his own money as he wants – the law simply restricts how much he can be reimbursed by donors.
ACLU: The Government’s System of Censoring Its Former Employees Is Unconstitutional
By Vera Eidelman and Ramya Krishnan
Under this system, known as “prepublication review,” millions of former public servants must submit their writing to the government for review prior to publication…
On Tuesday, the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University and the ACLU filed a lawsuit challenging the system, in its current form, on behalf of five former intelligence agency employees and military personnel.
Originally, prepublication review affected a small number of former government employees, mostly those who worked for the Central Intelligence Agency and had access to the nation’s most sensitive secrets. In the late 1970s, one CIA employee challenged the agency’s prepublication review regime on First Amendment grounds, but the Supreme Court dismissed his claim – without briefing or a hearing on the merits of the claim – in a single footnote.
Since then, the system has grown increasingly unwieldy, arbitrary, and far-reaching. Today at least 17 agencies administer some form of prepublication review. Review criteria are opaque and overbroad, and they differ across agencies. Authors have no meaningful recourse to contest unfavorable decisions. Censors have sweeping power to delay publication or to redact information regardless of whether it would reveal bona fide national security secrets. Moreover, the government appears to review manuscripts that are critical of intelligence agencies and government policies with greater scrutiny and more slowly.
This broken system violates the First Amendment because it infringes both the authors’ right to speak as well as the public’s right to hear them.
