IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT 

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA 

TED CRUZ FOR SENATE, et al., 

Plaintiffs, 

v. 

FEDERAL ELECTION COMMISSION, et al., 

Defendant. 

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Civil Action No. 19-908-APM 

PLAINTIFFS’ REPLY IN SUPPORT OF THEIR 

APPLICATION FOR A THREE-JUDGE COURT AND 

RESPONSE TO DEFENDANTS’ MOTION TO DISMISS 

Chris Gober 

 (D.C. Bar No. 975981) 

The Gober Group PLLC 

3595 RR 620 S., Suite 200 

Austin, TX 78738 

(512) 354-1787 

Charles J. Cooper 

 (D.C. Bar No. 248070) 

John D. Ohlendorf 

 (DC Bar. No. 1024544) 

J. Joel Alicea 

 (D.C. Bar. No. 1022784) 

COOPER & KIRK, PLLC 

1523 New Hampshire Avenue, N.W. 

Washington, D.C. 20036 

(202) 220-9600 

(202) 220-9601 (facsimile) 

ccooper@cooperkirk.com 

Attorneys for Plaintiffs 

June 28, 2019 

Case 1:19-cv-00908-APM Document 29 Filed 06/28/19 Page 1 of 52
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TABLE OF CONTENTS 

Page 

TABLE OF AUTHORITIES .......................................................................................................... ii 

INTRODUCTION ...........................................................................................................................1 

BACKGROUND .............................................................................................................................4 

I. Section 304’s Limit on the Repayment of Personal Loans. .................................................4 

II. Senator Cruz’s 2018 Loans. .................................................................................................6 

III. Procedural History. ..............................................................................................................7 

ARGUMENT ...................................................................................................................................8 

I. Section 403 of BCRA Requires the Court To Convene a Three-Judge Court 

Immediately, Before Deciding Defendants’ Challenge to Plaintiffs’ Standing. ..................8 

A. Section 403 Requires That Defendants’ Standing Challenge Must Be 

Decided by a Three-Judge Court. ................................................................8 

B. Plaintiffs’ Constitutional Challenge to Section 304 Is Plainly 

Substantial. .................................................................................................14 

C. The Jurisdiction of the Three-Judge Court Required by Section 403 

Extends to Plaintiffs’ Challenge to FEC’s Implementing Regulations. ....29 

II. In Any Event, Defendants’ Challenge to Plaintiffs’ Standing Fails. .................................32 

A. Plaintiffs’ Injuries Are Not Self-Inflicted. .............................................................32 

B. Plaintiffs Have Standing To Bring Their Overbreadth Claim. ..............................44 

CONCLUSION .................................................................................................................................. 

Case 1:19-cv-00908-APM Document 29 Filed 06/28/19 Page 2 of 52
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TABLE OF AUTHORITIES 

Cases Page 

Adams v. Clinton, 40 F. Supp. 2d 1 (D.D.C. 1999) .......................................................................31 

Afifi v. Lynch, 101 F. Supp. 3d 90 (D.D.C. 2015) ..........................................................................44 

Alabama v. Bozeman, 533 U.S. 146 (2001) .....................................................................................9 

 *Allee v. Medrano, 416 U.S. 802 (1974) ...................................................................................30, 31 

 *Allen v. Wright, 468 U.S. 737 (1984) ............................................................................................35 

 *Anderson v. Spear, 356 F.3d 651 (6th Cir. 2004) ........................................................15, 18, 26, 28 

 *Arizona Free Enter. Club’s Freedom Club PAC v. Bennett, 

564 U.S. 721 (2011) ......................................................................................16, 22, 23, 24, 25 

Arizona v. Holder, 839 F. Supp. 2d 36 (D.D.C. 2012) ..................................................................31 

Becker v. FEC, 230 F.3d 381 (1st Cir. 2000) ................................................................................38 

Bell v. Hood, 327 U.S. 678 (1946) .................................................................................................14 

Bluman v. FEC, 766 F. Supp. 2d 1 (D.D.C. 2011) ........................................................................32 

Broadrick v. Oklahoma, 413 U.S. 601 (1973) ...............................................................................44 

Brown v. Board of Educ., 347 U.S. 483 (1954) .............................................................................35 

 *Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1 (1976) ..................................................3, 4, 16, 17, 19, 20, 22, 25, 29 

Camreta v. Greene, 563 U.S. 692 (2011) ..........................................................................13, 30, 32 

 *City of Jersey City v. Consol. Rail Corp., 668 F.3d 741 (D.C. Cir. 2012) ..............................38, 39 

City of Jersey City v. Consol. Rail Corp., 741 F. Supp. 2d 131 (D.D.C. 2010) ............................39 

City of Rome, Ga. v. United States, 472 F. Supp. 221 (D.D.C. 1979) ...........................................31 

Colorado Republican Fed. Campaign Comm. v. FEC, 518 U.S. 604 (1996)................................23 

 *Davis v. FEC, 554 U.S. 724 (2008) .................................................................16, 17, 19, 21, 24, 25 

Dombrowski v. Pfister, 380 U.S. 479 (1965) .................................................................................44 

Equal Rights Ctr. v. Post Props., Inc., 633 F.3d 1136 (D.C. Cir. 2011) .......................................34 

Evers v. Dwyer, 358 U.S. 202 (1958) ............................................................................................36 

Ex parte Poresky, 290 U.S. 30 (1933) ...........................................................................................12 

Fair Emp’t Council of Greater Washington, Inc. v. BMC Mktg. Corp., 

28 F.3d 1268 (D.C. Cir. 1994) .................................................................................................36 

FEC v. O’Donnell, 209 F. Supp. 3d 727 (D. Del. 2016) .........................................................19, 20 

Gonzalez v. Automatic Emps. Credit Union, 419 U.S. 90 (1974) ............................................12, 13 

Grocery Mfrs. Ass’n v. EPA, 693 F.3d 169 (D.C. Cir. 2012) ..................................................34, 43 

 *Havens Realty Corp. v. Coleman, 455 U.S. 363 (1982) ..........................................................34, 36 

Case 1:19-cv-00908-APM Document 29 Filed 06/28/19 Page 3 of 52
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Hazardous Waste Treatment Council v. Thomas, 885 F.2d 918 (D.C. Cir. 1989) ........................34 

Huron v. Berry, 12 F. Supp. 3d 46 (D.D.C. 2013) ...................................................................42, 43 

In re Sealed Case, 838 F.2d 476 (D.C. Cir.) ..................................................................................30 

In re U.S. Office of Pers. Mgmt. Data Sec. Breach Litig., 

2019 WL 2552955 (D.C. Cir. June 21, 2019) ..........................................................................33 

Independence Inst. v. FEC, 816 F.3d 113 (D.C. Cir. 2016) ..............................................13, 14, 15 

Independence Inst. v. FEC, 216 F. Supp. 3d 176 (D.D.C. 2016) ..................................................15 

J. Roderick MacArthur Found. v. FBI, 102 F.3d 600 (D.C. Cir. 1996) .........................................36 

Kuehl v. Sellner, 887 F.3d 845 (8th Cir. 2018) ..............................................................................35 

 *LaRoque v. Holder, 650 F.3d 777 (D.C. Cir. 2011) ......................................................................41 

Lexecon Inc. v. Milberg Weiss Bershad Hynes & Lerach, 523 U.S. 26 (1998) ...............................9 

Libertarian Nat’l Comm., Inc. v. FEC, 924 F.3d 533 (D.C. Cir. 2019) ............................23, 39, 40 

Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555 (1992) ....................................................................32 

McConnell v. FEC, 540 U.S. 93 (2003) .............................................................................29, 32, 43 

 *McCutcheon v. FEC, 572 U.S. 185 (2014) ..................................................................20, 23, 26, 28 

Meese v. Keene, 481 U.S. 465 (1987) ............................................................................................41 

NAACP v. New York, 413 U.S. 345 (1973) ....................................................................................10 

National Family Planning & Reproductive Health Ass’n, Inc. v. Gonzales, 

468 F.3d 826 (D.C. Cir. 2006) ...........................................................................................41, 42

Petro-Chem Processing, Inc. v. EPA, 866 F.2d 433 (D.C. Cir. 1989) ....................................34, 43 

Randall v. Sorrell, 548 U.S. 230 (2006) ........................................................................................25 

Reuss v. Balles, 584 F.2d 461 (D.C. Cir. 1978) .............................................................................12 

Rosado v. Wyman, 397 U.S. 397 (1970) ........................................................................................10 

Rufer v. FEC, 64 F. Supp. 3d 195 (D.D.C. 2014) ..........................................................................13 

San Diego Unified Port Dist. v. Gianturco, 651 F.2d 1306 (9th Cir. 1981) ..................................30 

SAS Inst., Inc. v. Iancu, 138 S. Ct. 1348 (2018) ............................................................................30 

 *Secretary of State of Md. v. Joseph H. Munson Co., 467 U.S. 947 (1984) ..............................44, 45 

 *Shapiro v. McManus, 136 S. Ct. 450 (2015) .....................................................................14, 15, 29 

Stop This Insanity Inc. Emp. Leadership Fund v. FEC, 761 F.3d 10 (D.C. Cir. 2014) .................43 

Turner Broad. System, Inc. v. FCC, 810 F. Supp. 1308 (D.D.C. 1992) ........................................30 

United States v. Supreme Court of New Mexico, 839 F.3d 888 (10th Cir. 2016) ..........................40 

Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490 (1975) ............................................................................................35 

Case 1:19-cv-00908-APM Document 29 Filed 06/28/19 Page 4 of 52
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Legislative and Administrative Materials 

28 U.S.C. 

§ 1253 (1970) ...........................................................................................................................13 

§ 1367.......................................................................................................................................31 

§ 2281 (1970) ...........................................................................................................................11 

§ 2284(b) ................................................................................................................................7, 8 

47 U.S.C. § 555 ..............................................................................................................................10 

52 U.S.C. 

§ 10101(g) ................................................................................................................................10 

§ 30109(a)(5)(A) ........................................................................................................................6 

§ 30109(a)(5)(B) ........................................................................................................................6 

§ 30109(d)(1)(A) ........................................................................................................................6 

§ 30110.....................................................................................................................................11 

§ 30110 note ...........................................................................................1, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 29, 30 

§ 30116(a) ................................................................................................................................26 

§ 30116(j) ...............................................................................................................1, 4, 6, 20, 27 

S.J. Res. 46, 110th Cong., 122 Stat. 5036, Sec. 1(b)(2) (2008) ...............................................11, 30 

147 CONG REC. 

S2459 (daily ed. Mar. 19, 2001) (statement of Sen. Feinstein) .................................................4 

S2460 (daily ed. Mar. 19, 2001) (statement of Sen. Domenici) ............................................4, 5 

S2461 (daily ed. Mar. 19, 2001) (statement of Sen. Durbin) ...............................................5, 24 

S2462 (daily ed. Mar. 19, 2001) (statement of Sen. Domenici) ................................................5 

S2462 (daily ed. Mar. 19, 2001) (statement of Sen. Durbin) .....................................................5 

S2463 (daily ed. Mar. 19, 2001) (statement of Sen. DeWine) .............................................4, 24 

S2464 (daily ed. Mar. 19, 2001) (statement of Sen. Sessions) ..................................................5 

S2465 (daily ed. Mar. 19, 2001) (statement of Sen. Dodd) .....................................................24 

S2465 (daily ed. Mar. 19, 2001) (statement of Sen. Sessions) ..................................................5 

S2538 (daily ed. Mar. 20, 2001) (statement of Sen. DeWine) ...................................................5 

S2540 (daily ed. Mar. 20, 2001) (statement of Sen. McCain) .................................................25 

S2540 (daily ed. Mar. 20, 2001) (statement of Sen. Durbin) ....................................................5 

S2544 (daily ed. Mar. 20, 2001) (statement of Sen. Daschle) .................................................24 

S2548 (daily ed. Mar. 20, 2001) (statement of Sen. Levin) .....................................................24 

S2852 (daily ed. Mar. 26, 2001) (statement of Sen. Reid) ................................................24, 25 

148 CONG. REC. S2142 (daily ed. Mar. 20, 2002) (statement of Sen. Feingold) .......................1, 10 

11 C.F.R. 

§ 100.110(a) .............................................................................................................................17 

§ 100.111..................................................................................................................................17 

§ 100.142..................................................................................................................................17 

§ 100.143..................................................................................................................................17 

§ 110.1(b)(3) ............................................................................................................................23 

§ 110.1(b)(3)(i) ......................................................................................................................4, 6 

§ 110.1(b)(3)(ii)(C) ..................................................................................................................23 

§ 110.1(b)(3)(iii) ......................................................................................................................26 

Case 1:19-cv-00908-APM Document 29 Filed 06/28/19 Page 5 of 52
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§ 116.11................................................................................................................................5, 20 

§ 116.11(b) ...............................................................................................................................20 

§ 116.11(b)(1) ..........................................................................................................................27 

§ 116.11(a) .................................................................................................................................6 

§ 116.11(c) .............................................................................................................................5, 6 

§ 116.11(c)(2) ............................................................................................................................6 

Other Authorities 

Brief for Appellee, Davis v. FEC, 2008 WL 742921 (Mar. 19, 2008) ..........................................18 

Campaign Finance Data: Candidates 2020, FEC, https://bit.ly/2EAEJIM 

(last accessed June 27, 2019) ...................................................................................................29 

Michael E. Solimine, The Fall and Rise of Specialized Federal Constitutional Courts, 

17 U. PA. J. CONST. L. 115 (2014) ............................................................................................11 

CHARLES A. WRIGHT & ARTHUR R. MILLER, FED. PRAC. & PROC. (3d ed.) ........................9, 34, 36 

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INTRODUCTION 

When Congress enacted the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (“BCRA”), it 

recognized that it was legislating in an area that implicated the most fundamental First Amendment 

rights of free political expression, and that the controversial new rules it was imposing would thus 

be subject to constitutional challenge in the courts. Accordingly, to ensure “expedited judicial 

review” of such challenges, 148 CONG. REC. S2142 (daily ed. Mar. 20, 2002) (statement of Sen. 

Feingold), Congress established a special procedure to govern them: under Section 403 of the Act, 

“[i]f any action is brought for declaratory or injunctive relief to challenge the constitutionality of 

any provision of this Act[,] . . . [t]he action shall be filed in the United States District Court for the 

District of Columbia and shall be heard by a 3-judge court convened pursuant to [28 

U.S.C.] section 2284.” 52 U.S.C. § 30110 note. The terms of the specialized judicial-review 

provision are both expansive and unyielding. They apply to “any action” challenging the 

constitutionality of BCRA, not just some of them; they govern the determination of the “action” 

as a whole, not just particular claims, motions, or remedies it may encompass; and they provide 

that when any such action is brought, it “shall be heard by a 3-judge court,” not that such a body 

may be convened as a discretionary matter. Id. (emphases added). 

This action falls four-square within this provision’s terms. Plaintiffs—Senator Cruz and 

his authorized campaign committee (“Cruz Committee”)—“challeng[e] the constitutionality” of a 

“provision of th[e] Act”: Section 304’s $250,000 limit on the use of post-election campaign 

contributions to repay loans a candidate makes to his campaign. See 52 U.S.C. § 30116(j). Under 

the unambiguous text of Section 403, that is the end of the inquiry. The matter really is as simple 

as we described in our initial Application for a Three-Judge Court: this is an action challenging 

the constitutionality of a provision of BCRA, so a three-judge court must be convened. Period. 

Case 1:19-cv-00908-APM Document 29 Filed 06/28/19 Page 7 of 52
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Defendants—the Federal Election Commission and its members (“FEC”)—ask this Court 

to engraft a series of exceptions onto Section 403’s exceptionless text. First, they maintain that a 

single judge can decline to convene a three-judge court under BCRA if there is no subject matter 

jurisdiction and that there is no jurisdiction here because Plaintiffs lack standing. That qualification 

appears nowhere in Section 403 and is, in fact, flatly contrary to it: Section 403 requires a threejudge court to hear and determine the “action” as a whole, and a pretrial motion to dismiss under 

Rule 12(b)(1) is indisputably part of that “action.” To be sure, there are other three-judge court 

provisions—such as the statutes that once required three-judge-court adjudication of any motion 

for an injunction restraining an unconstitutional federal or state statute—that are drawn less 

broadly, and those provisions can and have been read as allowing a single-judge to make a 

threshold jurisdictional determination. But Section 403’s text is dispositively different, so the 

Supreme Court and D.C. Circuit precedents cited by the FEC—all of which interpreted and applied 

these other, textually distinct three-judge court provisions—are inapposite. And while a few 

previous decisions of this Court have adopted Defendants’ jurisdiction exception in the BCRA 

context, those cases are non-binding, and they did not consider the textual features of BCRA that 

make it distinct, so they are not persuasive. 

Even if this Court, sitting as a single judge, could resolve Defendants’ standing challenge, 

Plaintiffs clearly have standing. The Government does not dispute that Senator Cruz has been 

injured by Section 304; rather, it asserts his injury is self-inflicted because he made his loan to the 

campaign the day before the election. But this reasoning contradicts basic principles of standing 

doctrine established in landmark civil rights cases. The FEC also asserts that Senator Cruz and the 

Cruz Committee inflicted their injuries on themselves because they could have arranged to repay 

the Senator’s loans using pre-election funds. Yes, and Rosa Parks could have sat in the back of the 

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bus. FEC’s argument essentially faults Plaintiffs for not forfeiting the very constitutional right they 

seek to vindicate in this litigation. The Supreme Court and the D.C. Circuit have rejected 

arguments just like the ones the FEC makes here, and this Court should do the same. 

Finally, the FEC’s premature attempt to obtain a victory on the merits also fails. The 

Supreme Court and D.C. Circuit have time and again reminded the lower courts that a single judge 

can decline to convene a three-judge court by resolving the merits of the case only if the claims 

are wholly insubstantial, obviously frivolous, and essentially fictitious. The First Amendment 

claims alleged in the complaint challenge a restriction on the right of a candidate to use his own 

money “without legislative limit on behalf of his own candidacy.” Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1, 

54 (1976). Section 304 plainly burdens this core First Amendment right, by restricting the pools 

of funds that a campaign committee may use to pay off the candidate’s loans and thereby 

necessarily diminishing, in the FEC’s own words, “the likelihood he or she might be repaid.” Def. 

FEC’s Opp’n to Pls.’ Appl. for a Three-Judge Ct. & Mot. to Dismiss at 44 (June 7, 2019), Doc. 26 

(“MTD Br.”). And an increase in the risk of repayment likewise necessarily diminishes the 

likelihood that such a loan, and the core political speech it would have funded, will be made in the 

first place. Section 304 thus cannot survive judicial scrutiny, for the governmental interest it 

actually was designed to advance (levelling the playing field between wealthy and non-wealthy 

candidates) is flatly impermissible, and the sanitized interest the FEC has conjured up to justify it 

in this litigation (curbing quid pro quo corruption) is in reality impeded by Section 304’s limits. 

The FEC’s request that this Court adjudicate the merits of this case before convening a three-judge 

court is thus flatly contrary to binding Supreme Court and D.C. Circuit precedent. 

Defendants’ motion to dismiss must be denied, and a three-judge court convened 

immediately. 

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BACKGROUND 

I. Section 304’s Limit on the Repayment of Personal Loans. 

Federal law generally allows a federal candidate’s authorized campaign committee to use 

money contributed after an election to pay the debts that it incurred before the election in 

connection with the campaign and that remain outstanding after Election Day. See 11 C.F.R. 

§ 110.1(b)(3)(i). And ever since the landmark decision in Buckley v. Valeo, it has been a 

foundational principle of campaign finance law that a candidate may spend unlimited amounts of 

his own money in support of his own campaign for election: “the First Amendment simply cannot 

tolerate [a legal] restriction upon the freedom of a candidate to speak without legislative limit on 

behalf of his own candidacy.” 424 U.S. at 54. The provisions challenged in this lawsuit lie at the 

intersection of these two legal rules. Adopted as part of the “Millionaire’s Amendment” designed 

to “level the playing field” between self-funding candidates and their non-self-funding opponents, 

Section 304 of BCRA imposes a $250,000 limit on a committee’s ability to use funds contributed 

after the election to repay loans made by the candidate to support his campaign. 

Any candidate who incurs personal loans made after the effective date of the 

Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 in connection with the candidate’s 

campaign for election shall not repay (directly or indirectly), to the extent such 

loans exceed $250,000, such loans from any contributions made to such candidate 

or any authorized committee of such candidate after the date of such election. 

52 U.S.C. § 30116(j). 

The legislative history of BCRA leaves little doubt that the purpose of the Millionaire’s 

Amendment was to “level the playing field” between wealthy and non-wealthy candidates. 147 

CONG. REC. S2463 (daily ed. Mar. 19, 2001) (statement of Sen. DeWine). Indeed, the 

congressional debate over the provision is replete with statements making that point clear. See, 

e.g., id. at S2459 (statement of Sen. Feinstein) (amendment was “an attempt to level the playing 

Case 1:19-cv-00908-APM Document 29 Filed 06/28/19 Page 10 of 52
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field.”); id. at 2460 (statement of Sen. Domenici) (same); id. at S2464 (statement of Sen. Sessions) 

(same); Id. at S2540 (daily ed. Mar. 20, 2001) (statement of Sen. Durbin) (same). 

This was not simply the purpose of the Millionaire’s Amendment as a whole: it was the 

purpose of the loan-repayment limit in particular. The debate over the Amendment did not 

distinguish between wealthy candidates spending money and loaning it, because, as its sponsors 

noted, “a lot of people who are very wealthy do not give money to their campaign; they loan it and 

say they will be repaid later.” 147 CONG. REC. S2461 (daily ed. Mar. 19, 2001) (statement of Sen. 

Durbin); see also id. at S2462 (statement of Sen. Durbin) (“Think about what this institution will 

become if that is what one of the rules is to be part of the game: That you have to be loaning or 

contributing literally millions of dollars in order to be a candidate for public office.”); id. at S2465 

(statement of Sen. Sessions) (amendment “prohibits wealthy candidates, who incur personal loans 

in connection with their campaign that exceed $250,000, from repaying those loans from any 

contributions made to the candidate.”); id. at S2462 (statement of Sen. Domenici) (“it should be a 

condition to your putting up your own money, knowing right up front you are not going to get it 

back from your constituents”). Accordingly, as one co-sponsor made clear, the repayment limit for 

“personal loans or property used for collateral for a loan to the campaign” was merely a part of the 

Amendment’s effort to “create greater fairness and accountability in the Federal election process 

by addressing the inequity that arises when a wealthy candidate pays for his or her campaign with 

personal funds.” 147 CONG REC. S2538 (daily ed. Mar. 20, 2001) (statement of Sen. DeWine). 

FEC has promulgated regulations implementing Section 304’s loan-repayment limit. See 

11. C.F.R. § 116.11. When “the aggregate outstanding balance of the personal loans exceeds 

$250,000 after the election,” the FEC’s regulations establish a 20-day post-election limit on a 

campaign committee’s ability to use cash on hand as of the date of the election to repay pre-election 

Case 1:19-cv-00908-APM Document 29 Filed 06/28/19 Page 11 of 52
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candidate loans. Id. § 116.11(c). Any balance in excess of the $250,000 cap after the 20-day period 

cannot be repaid; it must be treated “as a contribution by the candidate.” Id. § 116.11(c)(2). And 

the FEC’s regulations differ in one important respect from the requirements of BCRA. While the 

text of Section 304 reaches only personal loans that a candidate “incurs” in connection with his 

campaign, 52 U.S.C. § 30116(j) (emphasis added), the FEC’s regulation applies not only to loans 

incurred by the candidate for the benefit of his campaign, but also to loans that a candidate makes

directly to the campaign from his personal funds. See 11 C.F.R. § 116.11(a). 

The penalties for violating the $250,000 limit found in BCRA and Section 116.11 are 

serious, including both civil and criminal penalties. See 52 U.S.C. §§ 30109(a)(5)(A); 

30109(a)(5)(B); 30109(d)(1)(A). 

II. Senator Cruz’s 2018 Loans. 

BCRA’s $250,000 limit, as implemented by Section 116.11, has had a direct and adverse 

effect on Plaintiffs, burdening their right to engage in core political speech and forcing Senator 

Cruz to forego repayment of $10,000 of personal loans made to support his campaign. 

Prior to the November 6, 2018 election, Senator Cruz made or incurred two loans totaling 

$260,000 to the Cruz Committee to help finance his reelection campaign for the United States 

Senate: a $5,000 loan that Senator Cruz made from his personal bank accounts and a $255,000 

margin loan that Senator Cruz incurred for the benefit of the campaign and that is secured with his 

personal assets. Compl. ¶ 28 (Apr. 1, 2019), Doc. 1 (“Compl.”). At the end of November 6, the 

Cruz Committee did not have sufficient funds to both repay these loans and satisfy the nearly $2.5 

million in debts it incurred to other creditors in connection with the election—in fact, it ended the 

election with approximately $406,194 in “net debts outstanding,” as defined in 11 C.F.R. § 

110.1(b)(3)(i). Compl. ¶ 29. Accordingly, during the 20 days following the election, it used its 

cash on hand to satisfy debts to other creditors rather than repay Senator Cruz’s loans. Id. Only in 

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December—well after the 20-day deadline—did the Committee begin to repay Senator Cruz’s 

personal loans. Compl. ¶ 30. And since by then Plaintiffs were bound by Section 304’s limit, the 

Committee could repay only $250,000 of the margin loan, leaving a total of $10,000 ($5,000 of 

the margin loan and the $5,000 loan from Senator Cruz’s own bank accounts) unpaid. Compl. ¶¶ 

30–31. 

III. Procedural History. 

Plaintiffs brought suit on April 1, 2019, challenging both Section 304 of BCRA and 11 

C.F.R § 116.11, as unconstitutional and unlawful. Because Plaintiffs’ complaint includes a 

constitutional challenge to a provision of BCRA, Plaintiffs simultaneously filed an application for 

the convening of a three-judge court pursuant to Section 403 of BCRA, which provides: 

If any action is brought for declaratory or injunctive relief to challenge the 

constitutionality of any provision of this Act or any amendment made by this Act 

. . . , the following rules shall apply: 

(1) The action shall be filed in the United States District Court for the 

District of Columbia and shall be heard by a 3-judge court convened 

pursuant to section 2284 of title 28, United States Code. 

. . . . 

(3) A final decision in the action shall be reviewable only by appeal directly 

to the Supreme Court of the United States. . . . 

(4) It shall be the duty of the United States District Court for the District of 

Columbia and the Supreme Court of the United States to advance on the 

docket and to expedite to the greatest possible extent the disposition of the 

action and appeal. 

52 U.S.C. § 30110 note. 28 U.S.C. Section 2284, in turn, provides: 

In any action required to be heard and determined by a district court of three judges 

. . . , the composition and procedure of the court shall be as follows: 

(1) Upon the filing of a request for three judges, the judge to whom the 

request is presented shall, unless he determines that three judges are not 

required, immediately notify the chief judge of the circuit, who shall 

designate two other judges, at least one of whom shall be a circuit judge. . . . 

Case 1:19-cv-00908-APM Document 29 Filed 06/28/19 Page 13 of 52
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28 U.S.C. § 2284(b). 

On June 7, FEC filed a response to our application and a cross-motion to dismiss the case. 

ARGUMENT 

The FEC raises essentially three arguments in support of its request that this Court dismiss 

some or all of our claims without convening a three-judge court. First, it contends that both Senator 

Cruz and the Committee lack standing to challenge Section 304 because the injuries they have 

suffered are “self-inflicted.” Second, FEC maintains that the merits of our claims are so entirely 

frivolous and insubstantial that they fall outside the bounds of BCRA’s three-judge-court 

requirement. And third, it argues that our challenge to its regulations implementing Section 304 is 

beyond the jurisdiction of a three-judge court. None of these arguments has merit. 

The root difficulty is that BCRA’s three-judge court requirement, in plain English, 

unequivocally instructs that when an “action” is brought challenging one of the Act’s provisions, 

the entire “action” “shall be heard by a 3-judge court.” 52 U.S.C. § 30110 note (emphasis added). 

Because Defendants’ pre-trial motion to dismiss this “action” is plainly a part of this “action,” it 

is three-judge business, not single-judge business. The FEC’s argument that the merits of our 

claims are so insubstantial as to escape BCRA’s mandatory three-judge court requirement is itself 

frivolous. Finally, even if the FEC’s challenge to our standing were properly before this singlejudge Court (and it is not), its motion to dismiss would still fail, for both Plaintiffs have standing 

to vindicate their own First Amendment rights and to challenge BCRA’s overbroad restrictions. 

I. Section 403 of BCRA Requires the Court To Convene a Three-Judge Court 

Immediately, Before Deciding Defendants’ Challenge to Plaintiffs’ Standing. 

A. Section 403 Requires That Defendants’ Standing Challenge Must Be 

Decided by a Three-Judge Court. 

Section 403 of BCRA describes, in certain and unequivocal terms, what is to happen when 

an action, like this one, is “brought for declaratory or injunctive relief to challenge the 

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constitutionality of any provision of this Act.” 52 U.S.C. § 30110 note. The action is to be “filed 

in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia and shall be heard by a 3-judge 

court convened pursuant to Section 2284 of title 28, United States Code.” Id. (emphasis added). 

Section 403 does not say that such an action “may” be heard by a three-judge court, or that a threejudge court should be convened “in some cases.” Nor does it say that only particular issues or 

motions are the business of all three judges. No, Congress has instructed that when a constitutional 

challenge to BCRA is filed, the entire “action” “shall be heard by a 3-judge court.” Id. (emphasis 

added). As the Supreme Court has repeatedly held, “the word ‘shall’ is ordinarily the language of 

command,” Alabama v. Bozeman, 533 U.S. 146, 153 (2001), an unambiguous word that “normally 

creates an obligation impervious to judicial discretion,” Lexecon Inc. v. Milberg Weiss Bershad 

Hynes & Lerach, 523 U.S. 26, 27 (1998). And Section 403 itself creates no exceptions to its 

overriding command that an action such as this one “shall be heard by a 3-judge court.” 52 U.S.C. 

§ 30110 note. 

The unyielding nature of Section 403’s instruction that a three-judge court shall be 

convened accords with Congress’s core purpose in subjecting actions like this one to the 

jurisdiction of a three-judge court. Congress has generally reserved the three-judge-court process 

for issues of great, national importance, 17A WRIGHT & MILLER, FED. PRAC. & PROC. § 4235 (3d 

ed.)—a description that perfectly captures the core First Amendment rights at stake in litigation 

over the constitutionality of BCRA. Further, as Senator Feingold, co-sponsor of BCRA, explained 

on the eve of the statute’s passage, Congress thought adjudication in a three-judge district court—

with direct, mandatory appellate review by the Supreme Court—was particularly essential in this 

context so that the severe constitutional doubts many in Congress harbored about several of 

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BCRA’s restrictions could be resolved as swiftly as possible through an “expedited judicial review 

process.” 148 CONG. REC. S2142 (daily ed. Mar. 20, 2002) (statement of Sen. Feingold). 

The FEC argues that the Court should “narrowly construe” Section 403, to further the 

“overriding policy of minimizing the mandatory docket of the Supreme Court.” MTD Br. 12 

(ellipses and brackets omitted)). But even assuming that such a policy exists, that policy has no 

application here, because under the plain language of Section 403, the Supreme Court will have 

mandatory, direct appellate jurisdiction in this case regardless of whether a three-judge court is 

convened. BCRA provides that “[i]f any action is brought for declaratory or injunctive relief to 

challenge the constitutionality of any provision of this Act,” then “[a] final decision in the action 

shall be reviewable only by appeal directly to the Supreme Court of the United States.” 52 U.S.C. 

§ 30110 note. In contrast to other three-judge court provisions, see, e.g., 47 U.S.C. § 555; 52 U.S.C. 

§ 10101(g), BCRA nowhere conditions the existence of mandatory appellate jurisdiction in the 

Supreme Court on the actual convening of, or decision by, a three-judge court. The Supreme Court 

thus has direct appellate jurisdiction over this case regardless of how this Court rules on the 

pending cross-motions. Cf. NAACP v. New York, 413 U.S. 345, 353–54 (1973) (Voting Rights 

Act’s three-judge-court appeal provision was “subject to broad construction” and encompassed 

“any meaningful judicial determination made in the progress of the . . . lawsuit”). 

To be sure, if Plaintiffs do not have standing, then the three-judge court, like this Court, 

will lack subject-matter jurisdiction over the case. But the question at this stage in the proceedings 

is not whether jurisdiction exists, but rather which court decides whether jurisdiction exists. And 

since it is a “truism that a court always has jurisdiction to determine its own jurisdiction,” Rosado 

v. Wyman, 397 U.S. 397, 403 n.3 (1970), the three-judge court, no less than this one, will possess 

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jurisdiction to answer that question regardless of what the answer is. Because determining the 

answer is itself a part of this “action,” Section 403 demands that it go to the three-judge court. 

Section 403 is broader than many other three-judge court provisions. For instance, perhaps 

the best-known of these provisions—former 28 U.S.C. §§ 2281 and 2282’s requirements relating 

to injunctions in constitutional challenges—applied not to a type of action but to any request for a 

particular type of remedy. Those statutes provided that no injunction restraining the enforcement 

of federal or state statutes on the grounds of unconstitutionality could be granted “unless the 

application therefor is heard and determined by a district court of three judges.” 28 U.S.C. § 2281 

(1970). Adjudication of the remainder of the action was left to a single judge. 

Similarly, other statutes apply only to particular claims, rather than the action as a whole. 

For instance, when enacting legislation implementing the so-called “Saxbe Fix”—Congress’s 

attempt to solve the potential Emoluments Clause problem when a Member of Congress is 

appointed to executive office by retroactively undoing salary increases enacted during the 

appointee’s congressional tenure—Congress has repeatedly provided for three-judge court 

adjudication of “[a]ny claim challenging the constitutionality of the appointment.” S.J. Res. 46, 

110th Cong., 122 Stat. 5036, Sec. 1(b)(2) (2008) (emphasis added); see generally Michael E. 

Solimine, The Fall and Rise of Specialized Federal Constitutional Courts, 17 U. PA. J. CONST. L. 

115, 131 (2014). And the provision governing challenges to FECA similarly provides for the 

certification and transfer to the en banc D.C. Circuit of specific questions—regarding the 

“constitutionality of this Act,” 52 U.S.C. § 30110—not entire cases. These provisions show that 

when Congress wishes to disturb the ordinary march of civil procedure for only a portion of a case, 

it knows how to do it. Yet BCRA demands three-judge consideration of the action as a whole. 

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This distinction disposes of the FEC’s reliance on 28 U.S.C. § 2284. As Defendants point 

out, BCRA states that the three-judge court shall be “convened pursuant to section 2284 of title 

28,” and that provision, in turn, provides that a single judge need not convene such a body if “he 

determines that three judges are not required.” But whatever discretion may be granted to a single 

judge by this provision in cases arising under other three-judge-court provisions, under BCRA this 

determination is straightforward: if the action is one “brought for declaratory or injunctive relief 

to challenge the constitutionality of any provision of [BCRA],” then three judges are required, 

under Section 403, and the inquiry is at an end. 52 U.S.C. § 30110 note. 

The FEC cites a handful of Supreme Court and D.C. Circuit decisions in support of its 

assertion that this Court, sitting as a single judge, can decide the issue of standing. But with the 

exception of the non-binding decisions of this Court, all of the cases cited by Defendants arose in 

the context of three-judge court provisions other than BCRA’s. Those cases are thus inapposite. 

The key Supreme Court precedent under Section 2281, for instance, is Gonzalez v. 

Automatic Employee’s Credit Union, which held that the lack of “subject-matter jurisdiction” is 

“a ground upon which a single judge could . . . decline[ ] to convene a three-judge court” under 

Section 2281’s three-judge court-requirement for injunctive relief against state statutes. 419 U.S. 

90, 100 (1974); see also Ex parte Poresky, 290 U.S. 30, 32 (1933); Reuss v. Balles, 584 F.2d 461, 

464 (D.C. Cir. 1978). But Gonzalez is inapposite here because, as just explained, Section 2281 

merely required that certain motions be heard by a three-judge court: those requesting injunctions. 

As the Supreme Court reasoned, although “dismissal of a complaint on grounds short of the merits 

does ‘deny’ [a request for an] injunction in a literal sense,” Gonzalez, 419 U.S. at 96, both formally 

and practically such an order of dismissal only decides the defendant’s motion to dismiss, not the 

application for injunctive relief, so a three-judge court is unnecessary under the terms of Section 

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2281 itself. Under Section 403 of BCRA, by contrast, a three-judge court must adjudicate the entire 

“action”—which includes, of course, a pre-trial motion to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction. 

Gonzalez is also distinguishable because it was based, in important measure, on the 

“overriding policy, historically encouraged by Congress, of minimizing the mandatory docket of 

th[e] [Supreme] Court.” Id. at 98. Under the three-judge-court scheme relating specifically to 

injunctions, the scope of the Court’s appellate jurisdiction mapped onto the types of decisions 

made by three judges—kicking in only upon the entry of “an order granting or denying . . . [an] 

injunction” under Section 2281 or 2282. 28 U.S.C. § 1253 (1970). The Court’s conclusion that the 

“dismissal of a complaint on grounds short of the merits” does not really constitute a decision on 

the substance of an application for injunctive relief thus reduced both the quantity of three-court 

business and the scope of its own appellate docket. Gonzalez, 419 U.S. at 96. But as discussed, 

this consideration has no force here because BCRA vests mandatory and exclusive appellate 

jurisdiction in the Supreme Court over “any action” challenging the constitutionality of BCRA. 

The decisions of this Court holding that a single judge may dismiss a case under BCRA if 

it does not present a “justiciable controversy,” Rufer v. FEC, 64 F. Supp. 3d 195, 202 (D.D.C. 

2014), have not addressed these crucial textual distinctions between Section 403 and these other 

statutes. Instead, they have mechanically applied Gonzalez’s rule in the context of BCRA. These 

district-court decisions are not binding on this Court, so they cannot preclude its consideration of 

these key textual differences now. See Camreta v. Greene, 563 U.S. 692, 709 n.7 (2011). 

Precedential holdings from the D.C. Circuit are of course binding here, but that Court has 

never squarely held that Gonzalez’s rule applies under BCRA. We are aware of only one D.C. 

Circuit case addressing this issue in the context of BCRA: Independence Institute v. FEC, 816 F.3d 

113 (D.C. Cir. 2016). And while that case does state that “a three-judge court is not required where 

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the district court itself lacks jurisdiction,” id. at 116, it likewise does so in passing, without any 

inquiry into whether this rule should apply in the context of Section 403. While the casual nature 

of the comment would not matter if it were the holding of the D.C. Circuit, this aside in 

Independence Institute is the purest of dicta since the D.C. Circuit in fact reversed the dismissal in 

that case, holding that because there was at least one non-frivolous BCRA claim, “the case must 

proceed to a three-judge court.” Id. at 117. 

This Court thus remains free to consider, for the first time, the crucial textual distinctions 

between BCRA and the provisions at issue in previous precedents. It should hold that under the 

plain text of Section 403, Defendants’ standing challenge must go to the three-judge court. 

B. Plaintiffs’ Constitutional Challenge to Section 304 Is Plainly Substantial. 

Of course, a litigant cannot help himself to a three-judge court by asserting a facially 

frivolous claim challenging the constitutionality of BCRA. A single judge thus “need not 

unthinkingly initiate the procedures to convene a three-judge court without first examining the 

allegations in the complaint” to determine whether the BCRA claim is “wholly insubstantial and 

frivolous.” See Shapiro v. McManus, 136 S. Ct. 450, 455 (2015). Just as the courts have long 

prevented litigants from artfully pleading their way into federal question jurisdiction by taking a 

state-law case and tacking on a wholly frivolous claim arising under federal law, see Bell v. Hood, 

327 U.S. 678, 682–83 (1946), so too have the courts denied three-judge treatment to facially 

frivolous claims. But the FEC dramatically understates the stringency of this requirement. 

Both the Supreme Court and the D.C. Circuit have recently rebuked the lower courts for 

pretermitting the convening of a three-judge court by too-closely scrutinizing the case on the 

merits. In Shapiro, the Supreme Court held that the district court erred in dismissing a claim 

entitled to three-judge adjudication on the merits, emphasizing that the convening of a three-judge 

court could be dispensed with on this basis only if a claim is “ ‘essentially fictitious,’ ‘wholly 

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insubstantial,’ ‘obviously frivolous,’ and ‘obviously without merit.’ ” 136 S. Ct. at 456 (quoting 

Goosby v. Osser, 409 U.S. 512, 518 (1973)). Similarly, in Independence Institute, the D.C. Circuit 

reversed this Court’s dismissal of a BCRA case, reasoning that “as the Shapiro Court stressed, the 

exception for insubstantial claims is narrow.” 816 F.3d at 116. While the court did not “suggest 

that [the plaintiff’s] argument is a winner,” id. at 117—and indeed, the three-judge court ultimately 

dismissed the claims on the merits, Independence Inst. v. FEC, 216 F. Supp. 3d 176, 193 (D.D.C. 

2016), aff’d, 137 S. Ct. 1204 (2017)—it was nonetheless “entitled to make its case to a three-judge 

district court,” Independence Institute, 816 F.3d at 117. 

 Here, far from “essentially fictitious,” our claims will ultimately prevail. Section 304 

represents a remarkable intrusion on the rights of candidates and their campaign committees to 

make constitutionally protected decisions about how and when to speak during an election. During 

the heat of a campaign, a candidate may determine that she must give or loan her own money to 

her campaign to fund additional speech. That is particularly true of a challenger, who “may need 

to speak early in order to establish her position and garner contributions.” Anderson v. Spear, 356 

F.3d 651, 673 (6th Cir. 2004). And in the critical days before an election, a campaign’s creditors 

are in an especially precarious position, since any debts they are owed as of election night are 

inherently subject to a risk of default. After all, the campaign may close out the election without 

sufficient cash on hand to cover all of its outstanding debts; and a candidate’s ability to raise money 

to repay debts after an election is far from assured. Indeed, a candidate may be forced to loan her 

campaign additional money just so that it can repay its other creditors—and avoid the legal and 

reputational risks of defaulting on its obligations to those who spoke on its behalf. 

Section 304 intensifies and distorts these inherent risks, deliberately curbing the funding, 

and thus the speech, of both candidates and their campaigns. By baring the repayment of candidate 

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loans greater than $250,000 from money raised after the election, the challenged limit necessarily

increases the risk that these loans will not be repaid in full, or perhaps at all. Section 304 thus has 

the design and effect of deterring a candidate from making loans in excess of $250,000—directly 

burdening his First Amendment right “to speak without legislative limit on behalf of his own 

candidacy.” Buckley, 424 U.S. at 54. And Section 304 burdens the speech of committees, too. If a 

committee ends an election owing both debts to creditors and more than $250,000 in debt to the 

candidate, Section 304 forces the committee to use its cash on hand, if any, to pay the candidate 

first (or default on that portion of the candidate’s loan outright), and if there is any money left over, 

then to repay debts to other creditors, including the vendors who engaged in core political speech 

on behalf of the campaign. 

Section 304 thus represents a severe intrusion upon the First Amendment’s heartland. In 

the following sections, we briefly show: (1) that the conduct restricted by the challenged provisions 

is protected by the First Amendment, (2) that Section 304, and the regulations implementing it, 

directly burden those First Amendment rights, and (3) that this infringement of the First 

Amendment right to free speech cannot survive constitutional scrutiny. 

1. “[T]he First Amendment has its fullest and most urgent application to speech 

uttered during a campaign for political office.” Arizona Free Enter. Club’s Freedom Club PAC v. 

Bennett, 564 U.S. 721, 734 (2011) (quotation marks omitted). And there is no more fundamental 

First Amendment liberty than the right of a candidate “to engage in the discussion of public issues 

and vigorously and tirelessly to advocate his own election.” Davis v. FEC, 554 U.S. 724, 738 

(2008). While the Supreme Court’s campaign finance jurisprudence has ebbed and flowed over 

the decades following its landmark decision in Buckley, one principle has endured without change: 

any legal burden placed “on personal expenditures by a candidate in furtherance of his own 

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candidacy . . . clearly and directly interferes with constitutionally protected freedoms” and may be 

upheld only if it satisfies the strictest judicial scrutiny. 424 U.S. at 53. 

A candidate who makes or incurs loans for the benefit of his campaign is exercising this 

core First Amendment freedom. When Senator Cruz loaned $5,000 of his own money to his 

Committee for expenditure on behalf of his reelection, he was using his personal financial means 

to “vigorously and tirelessly . . . advocate his own election,” id. at 52—and that was no less true 

because of his hope, when he loaned this money, that the campaign would be able to reimburse 

the sum after the election. Likewise, when Senator Cruz pledged his own personal assets to secure 

a $255,000 loan that he, in turn, loaned to his Committee, he was engaged in “the vigorous exercise 

of the right to use personal funds to finance campaign speech,” Davis, 554 U.S. at 739—

notwithstanding his hope that the Committee would later be able to repay the loan so that he, in 

turn, could discharge the security interest on his assets. After all, those loans went to fund pure 

political speech—either directly or by repaying debts to vendors and other campaign creditors. 

Indeed, because making and incurring loans on behalf of one’s own candidacy is the 

transfer of a “thing[ ] of value,” it qualifies as an “expenditure” under the FEC’s own definition of 

that term. 11 C.F.R. § 100.110(a). The FEC’s definition of expenditure explicitly includes most 

loans, see id. § 100.111(a) (defining expenditure to include a “loan”); id. §§ 100.142 & 100.143 

(excepting certain bank loans and lines of credit), and “any guarantee or endorsement of a loan by 

a candidate,” id. § 100.111(b). Accordingly, under both common sense and the FEC’s own 

definitions, when Senator Cruz made and incurred the 2018 loans on behalf of his candidacy he 

was exercising his core First Amendment right of using his own financial resources “to engage in 

the discussion of public issues and vigorously and tirelessly to advocate his own election.” 

Buckley, 424 U.S. at 52. As the Sixth Circuit held in a directly analogous case, “[a]s a matter of 

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campaign finance law, . . . limitations on candidate loans are limitations on campaign expenditures, 

and limitations on campaign expenditures are prohibited by Buckley.” Anderson, 356 F.3d at 673. 

The FEC resists this proposition, arguing that Section 304 “does not regulate or affect 

speech or speech-related activities.” MTD Br. 28. But Defendants reach that conclusion only by 

redefining the First Amendment right supposedly at issue as the right to avoid the specific burden 

imposed by BCRA’s challenged restriction. Thus, the FEC asserts that Senator Cruz is merely 

asserting the right “to have [his] personal loans repaid,” and “having [one’s] loans repaid . . . is 

not a constitutional right at all.” Id. at 2, 27. This confused line of reasoning mistakes the burden 

imposed by the challenged law (making it more difficult for a candidate to have his personal loans 

repaid) for the right that is burdened (the candidate’s right to expend personal resources, including 

in the form of personal loans, on behalf of his election). If that trick worked, it could be used to 

defeat every First Amendment claim. For the Government could defend, for example, even a 

blanket $5,000 fine on anyone who speaks out against the current administration’s policies by 

arguing that avoiding the payment of $5,000 “is not a constitutional right at all.” 

Indeed, the Supreme Court explicitly repudiated this gambit in both Davis and Bennett. In 

Davis, a self-funding candidate challenged another portion of the Millionaire’s Amendment, which 

asymmetrically raised the contribution limits for the supporters of the plaintiff’s opponent when 

the plaintiff spent more than a certain amount of his personal funds. Just as it does here, the 

Government defended that burden on speech by arguing that it “does not limit in any way the use 

of a candidate’s personal wealth in his run for office,” and “the First Amendment poses no bar to 

Congress’s efforts to increase political speech.” Brief for Appellee at 29, Davis, 2008 WL 742921 

(Mar. 19, 2008). The Supreme Court emphatically rejected that argument. While acknowledging 

that there is “no constitutional basis for attacking contribution limits on the ground that they are 

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too high,” the constitutional right in question, the Court noted, was “the right to spend personal 

funds for campaign speech.” Davis, 554 U.S. at 737–40. And because BCRA’s asymmetric 

contribution-limit scheme imposed “a special and potentially significant burden” on that right, it 

was subject to strict scrutiny. Id. 

Similarly, Bennett involved an Arizona law that granted publicly financed candidates extra 

funding when their privately financed competitor spent more than a certain amount of personal 

funds. Just as FEC here argues that there is no “constitutional right[ ] for candidates to have their 

personal loans repaid,” MTD Br. 2, Justice Kagan’s dissent in Bennett emphasized that Buckley 

had upheld public financing of election campaigns under the First Amendment, 564 U.S. at 758 

(Kagan, J., dissenting). The mechanism Arizona used to burden speech was thus perfectly 

constitutional in the abstract. But that was beside the point. As the majority explained, “[w]hether 

Arizona’s matching funds provision comports with the First Amendment is not simply a question 

of whether the State can give a subsidy to a candidate to fund that candidate’s election, but whether 

that subsidy can be triggered by the speech of another candidate.” Id. at 743 n.9 (majority opinion). 

And when a subsidy is triggered “in direct response to the political speech of privately financed 

candidates,” it constitutes “an unprecedented penalty on any candidate who robustly exercises his 

First Amendment rights.” Id. at 736, 747 (brackets omitted). Under the FEC’s define-the-right-asthe-burden reasoning, both of these cases would have come out the other way. 

The FEC repeatedly cites the District of Delaware’s decision in FEC v. O’Donnell, 209 F. 

Supp. 3d 727 (D. Del. 2016), but that case is completely irrelevant. O’Donnell upheld FECA’s bar 

on using campaign contributions for the candidate’s “personal use,” reasoning that “the prohibition 

does not implicate First Amendment concerns” because it in no way “restricts or limits political 

speech.” Id. at 739. “[A] payment for [a candidate’s] living space [i]s payment for a personal 

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expense, not a payment to facilitate political expression.” Id. Here, the use of campaign 

contributions to repay Senator Cruz’s loans is plainly not a “personal use.” The FEC intimates that 

post-election loan-repayment contributions “effectively go[ ] into the candidate’s pocket” to 

“subsidize [the candidate’s] own personal expenses,” MTD. Br. 28, 41, but that is not so: such 

contributions go to refund to the candidate money that was used by the campaign for pure political 

speech. Indeed, despite this rhetoric, the FEC nowhere claims that the use of contributions to repay 

personal loans converts the contributions to “personal use.” After all, using contributions in this 

way is entirely legal with respect both to contributions made before the election and with respect 

to the first $250,000 of contributions made after the election. 52 U.S.C. § 30116(j); 11 C.F.R. § 

116.11(b). No “personal use” of campaign funds is at issue here, and O’Donnell is thus inapposite.1

Finally, the rights of campaign committees and contributors that are at stake here are also 

protected by the First Amendment. When a committee repays vendors who produced campaign 

advertisements, for instance, it is exercising a right that lies at the heartland of the First 

Amendment: the right to “spend [money] on political communication during a campaign.” 

Buckley, 424 U.S. at 19. That is evident from the FEC’s own briefing. Defendants note that the 

Cruz Committee used its cash-on-hand during the 20-day repayment window to reimburse vendors 

who engaged in political speech during the campaign and to make a contribution to the Texas 

Pastor Council, and it belittles the Committee’s “desire” to prioritize these expenditures over 

repaying Senator Cruz. MTD Br. 19. But these expenditures paid for core First Amendment 

expression. And the post-election contributions that Section 304 bars, of course, also enjoy First 

Amendment protection. Buckley, 424 U.S. at 25; McCutcheon v. FEC, 572 U.S. 185, 203 (2014). 

 1

 In all events, a single non-binding decision from a district court in another circuit cannot 

even conceivably suffice to show that Plaintiffs’ claims are wholly frivolous and insubstantial. 

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2. Section 304 imposes a direct and significant burden on the exercise of these First 

Amendment rights. By limiting the sources of funding that committees can use to repay candidate 

loans, the $250,000 cap necessarily increases the risk that these loans will not be repaid in full, or 

perhaps at all. Indeed, the FEC itself acknowledges that, in part because of Section 304, “a 

candidate deciding to loan his or her campaign money in advance of the election [will] not be able 

to accurately determine the likelihood he or she might be repaid.” MTD Br. 44. As in Davis, this 

provision thus limits “a candidate who wishes to exercise that right [to] two choices,” 554 U.S. at 

740: loan more than $250,000 under the significantly enhanced risk that such a loan will not be 

repaid in full, or simply decline to loan money in excess of this sum at all. And as in Davis, Section 

304 “does not provide any way in which a candidate can exercise that right without abridgment.” 

Id.

The FEC argues that “Davis is inapposite here because it involved a BCRA provision that 

penalized candidates for spending their own money in support of their campaigns,” while Section 

304 “imposes no similar penalty.” MTD Br. 31, 32. That is simply false. As just shown, Section 

304 does penalize a candidate’s right to loan money to his campaign—a form of political 

“spending” under the FEC’s own definitions—by directly and significantly reducing “the 

likelihood he or she might be repaid,” MTD Br. 44. The FEC also notes that unlike the limit in 

Davis, “the Loan Repayment Limit is not asymmetrical.” MTD Br. 32. But the Supreme Court in 

Bennett specifically rejected the notion that “the reach of that opinion is limited to asymmetrical 

contribution limits,” noting that Davis had focused on this feature of the Millionaire’s Amendment 

only “because that was the particular burden on candidate speech we faced.” 564 U.S. at 740. 

Defendants also argue that Section 304 does not trigger First Amendment scrutiny because 

it “does not infringe on a candidate’s ability to spend as much as he or she wants” and thus “Senator 

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Cruz was free to contribute or loan as much money as he wished to the Committee for such 

speech.” MTD Br. 30. But precisely the same argument was made, and rejected, in both Davis, 

compare 554 U.S. at 754–55 (Stevens, J., dissenting) with id. at 738–39 (majority opinion), and 

Bennett, compare 564 U.S. at 763 (Kagan, J., dissenting), with id. at 742–43 (majority opinion). It 

is far too late in the day to argue that the Government is free to burden the right to spend money 

on speech so long as it refrains from directly capping those expenditures. And the notion that 

Senator Cruz remains free to “loan as much money as he wished to the Committee,” MTD Br. 30, 

is plainly without merit, given that any loans in excess of $250,000 carry a significantly enhanced 

repayment risk, due to Section 304’s limits on the sources of funds that can be used to repay them. 

Section 304 also burdens the First Amendment rights of committees. The FEC points out 

that our complaint does not allege that the loan-repayment limit prevents the Committee from 

“amassing the resources necessary for effective campaign advocacy.” MTD Br. 33 (brackets and 

quotation marks omitted). But Section 304 burdens the Committee’s rights not only by limiting its 

receipts, but by limiting its expenditures. Because Section 304 bars a committee from repaying 

more than $250,000 in candidate loans from money raised after an election, it effectively forces 

the committee to repay such loans in excess of $250,00 with pre-election money, in preference to 

using that money to fund (or reimburse) core political speech. Section 304’s demand that 

committees forego (or at the very least delay) engaging in this constitutionally protected expression 

if they do not wish to default on the candidate’s loans “necessarily reduces the quantity of 

expression,” thereby “restricting the number of issues discussed, the depth of their exploration, 

and the size of the audience reached.” Buckley, 424 U.S. at 19.2

 

 2

 In any event, the en banc D.C. Circuit recently concluded that “Buckley and its progeny 

hardly foreclose application of closely drawn scrutiny” to contribution limits challenged by a 

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Finally, Section 304 also burdens the rights of contributors. While the FEC argues that 

Section 304 does not “prevent any individual from making a contribution, either before or after an 

election,” MTD Br. 35, that is not so. For an individual who wishes to contribute money to a 

candidate in connection with an election but is unable to do so before the election, the FEC’s 

regulations allow him to make post-election contributions only to the extent the candidate has “net 

debts outstanding.” 11 C.F.R. § 110.1(b)(3). And by barring more than $250,000 in post-election 

contributions from going towards repayment of the candidate’s loans—and excluding those loans 

from the calculation of net debts outstanding, id. § 110.1(b)(3)(ii)(C)—Section 304 creates the 

possibility that some individuals who wish to contribute post-election will be prevented from doing 

so, because the candidate’s net-debts-outstanding ceiling will already have been reached. Section 

304 thus impinges upon the rights of these contributors “to participate in the public debate through 

political expression and political association.” McCutcheon, 572 U.S. at 203. 

3. Because Section 304 burdens the core First Amendment expression of Senator Cruz 

and his Committee, it is subject to strict scrutiny—not the mere rational basis review proposed by 

the FEC. See Bennett, 564 U.S. at 748. Indeed, at a minimum, “closely drawn” scrutiny is required, 

given the restraints the challenged provisions impose on the rights of contributors. McCutcheon, 

572 U.S. at 199.3

 Section 304 flunks either standard for at least four reasons. 

First, while the FEC asserts that the loan-repayment limit was designed “to mitigate the 

heightened risk of quid pro quo corruption and its appearance,” MTD Br. 39, the provision’s 

 

committee, even if the limits do not prevent it from amassing the necessary resources for effective 

advocacy. Libertarian Nat’l Comm., Inc. v. FEC, 924 F.3d 533, 541 (D.C. Cir. 2019) (en banc). 

3

 Plaintiffs reserve the right to argue before the Supreme Court that Buckley’s prescription 

of “closely drawn” scrutiny for contribution limits either is tantamount to strict scrutiny or is itself 

inconsistent with fundamental First Amendment principles. See, e.g., Colorado Republican Fed. 

Campaign Comm. v. FEC, 518 U.S. 604, 635–44 (1996) (Thomas, J., dissenting). 

Case 1:19-cv-00908-APM Document 29 Filed 06/28/19 Page 29 of 52
24 

legislative history shows that it was actually designed to burden the ability of wealthy candidates 

to loan large sums to their campaign, thereby “level[ling] the playing field” between competing 

candidates, 147 CONG.REC. S2463 (daily ed. Mar. 19, 2001) (statement of Sen. DeWine). In Davis, 

the Government acknowledged, and the Court accepted, that the purpose of the Millionaire’s 

Amendment was to “level electoral opportunities for candidates of different personal wealth.” 554 

U.S. at 741. And the legislative history demonstrates that this purpose extended to Section 304 in 

particular, for as one of its co-sponsor’s recognized, “a lot of people who are very wealthy do not 

give money to their campaign; they loan it and say they will be repaid later.” 147 CONG. REC. 

S2461 (daily ed. Mar. 19, 2001) (statement of Sen. Durbin). As the Supreme Court has repeatedly 

stressed, because “[l]eveling electoral opportunities means making and implementing judgments 

about which strengths should be permitted to contribute to the outcome of an election, . . . it is not 

legitimate for the government to attempt to equalize electoral opportunities in this manner.” 

Bennett, 564 U.S. at 749–50 (quotation marks omitted) (emphasis added). Indeed, “such basic 

intrusion by the government into the debate over who should govern goes to the heart of First 

Amendment values.” Id. 

In addition to “level[ling] the playing field,” several legislators opposed to the Millionaire’s 

Amendment pointed out that the provision also had an even more antidemocratic design—it 

“protects incumbents.” 147 CONG. REC. S2544 (daily ed. Mar. 20, 2001) (statement of Sen. 

Daschle). After all, while challengers often need to spend significant amounts of seed money to 

raise name recognition even before they start to receive significant contributions, see Anderson, 

356 F.3d at 673, incumbents “have a lot of advantages that do not come out of our personal 

checkbooks,” 147 CONG. REC. S2465 (daily ed. Mar. 19, 2001) (statement of Sen. Dodd); see also 

id. at S2548 (daily ed. Mar. 20, 2001) (statement of Sen. Levin) (similar); id. at S2852 (daily ed. 

Case 1:19-cv-00908-APM Document 29 Filed 06/28/19 Page 30 of 52
25 

Mar. 26, 2001) (statement of Sen. Reid) (similar). Indeed, in a remarkably forthright statement, 

Senator McCain—a supporter of the Amendment—noted that the provision 

addresses, in all candor, a concern that literally every nonmillionaire Member of 

this body has, and that is that they wake up some morning and pick up the paper 

and find out that some multimillionaire is going to run for their seat, and that person 

intends to invest 3, 5, 8, 10, now up to $70 million of their own money in order to 

win. 

Id. at S2540 (daily ed. Mar. 20, 2001) (statement of Sen. McCain). The Supreme Court has 

consistently cautioned that campaign finance restrictions may not “magnify the advantages of 

incumbency to the point where they put challengers to a significant disadvantage,” and that “where 

there is strong indication in a particular case, i.e., danger signs, that such risks exist (both present 

in kind and likely serious in degree), courts . . . must review the record independently and carefully 

with an eye toward assessing the statute’s ‘tailoring.’ ” Randall v. Sorrell, 548 U.S. 230, 248, 249 

(2006) (opinion of Breyer, J.). Those “danger signs” are present here. 

Second, even accepting the FEC’s proffered anti-corruption interest at face value, that 

interest cannot justify Section 304 because the speech it restricts—the right of a candidate to spend 

his own money, in the form of a personal loan, to advance his candidacy—actually reduces the 

possibility of corruption. As the Supreme Court has emphasized time and again, “reliance on 

personal funds reduces the threat of corruption, and therefore [the Millionaire’s Amendment], by 

discouraging use of personal funds, disserves the anticorruption interest.” Davis, 554 U.S. at 740–

41; see also Buckley, 424 U.S. at 53; Bennett, 564 U.S. at 751. The FEC cannot justify Section 304 

as an anti-corruption measure when the primary effect of the burden it imposes on candidates’ 

speech “disserves the anticorruption interest.” Davis, 554 U.S. at 741 (emphasis added). 

Third, Section 304’s limits are not necessary to combat corruption for an independent 

reason: the federal contribution limits already serve to eliminate any concern that contributions 

will lead to quid-pro-quo corruption or its appearance. The base limit of $2,800 per contributor (as 

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26 

adjusted for inflation) applies to all contributions “with respect to any election,” 52 U.S.C. 

§ 30116(a)—so it governs post-election contributions “with respect to [that] election” in the same 

measure as pre-election contributions. Id.; see also 11 C.F.R. § 110.1(b)(3)(iii). As the Supreme 

Court explained in McCutcheon, “[t]hose base limits remain the primary means of regulating 

campaign contributions,” and “Congress’s selection of a [$2,800] base limit indicates its belief 

that contributions of that amount or less do not create a cognizable risk of corruption.” 572 U.S. 

at 209, 210 (emphasis added). Indeed, McCutcheon struck down FECA’s additional “aggregate” 

contribution limit, explaining that “it is difficult to understand” how violation of the aggregate 

limit could “be regarded as corruptible” if “there is no corruption concern” in contributing up to 

the base limit for each candidate. Id. So too here: Congress’s selection of a $2,800 base limit 

indicates its judgment that contributions in that amount—whether made pre- or post-election—do 

not raise the specter of quid-pro-quo corruption, and that remains true even if the committee uses 

them to repay candidate loans. See Anderson, 356 F.3d at 673 (invalidating cap on candidate loans 

because “the risk of quid pro quo is substantially mitigated by individual contribution limits”). 

The FEC makes two arguments in an attempt to avoid this logic. First, it argues that 

candidate-loan-repayment contributions are especially corrupting because they are received “after 

an election, at a time when the winner is already known and thus in a better position than a mere 

candidate to guarantee legislative favors to big donors.” MTD Br. 40–41. But Section 304 is a 

spectacularly poor fit for any such interest, since the same is true of all post-election 

contributions—yet federal law generally allows supporters to make contributions to an election 

after it has taken place. More fundamentally, this reasoning would doom all contributions to 

incumbent officeholders. These, no less than loan-repayment contributions, take place “after an 

election, at a time when the winner is already known.” Id. Yet there is no dispute that a contributor 

Case 1:19-cv-00908-APM Document 29 Filed 06/28/19 Page 32 of 52
27 

could have given Senator Cruz $2,800 on November 7, 2018, if he had designated it for the 

upcoming election cycle. The notion that the contribution would have suddenly become corrupting 

if it were instead designated for the 2018 election is farcical. 

The Government’s second argument fares no better. Section 304, the FEC notes, “applies 

to funds given by a campaign to a candidate or officeholder who can then essentially pocket those 

funds and use them for any purpose,” and, it says, “[a]t the very least, it appears corrupt to the 

public when candidates use contributions for their personal projects.” MTD Br. 41. Once again, if 

this is the interest genuinely protected by Section 304, then the provision is radically 

underinclusive—for precisely the same reasoning applies to the use of pre-election funds to repay 

candidate loans, yet the challenged provisions allow campaign funds to be used this way without 

limit. See 52 U.S.C. § 30116(j); 11 C.F.R. § 116.11(b)(1). Further, the same logic would apply to 

any repayment of a candidate loan with post-election funds, yet Section 304 allows such repayment 

up to $250,000. And more fundamentally, this argument simply misunderstands the nature of these 

contributions. As noted above, a debt-repayment contribution does not go “to subsidize [the 

candidate’s] own personal expenses,” MTD Br. 41; it refunds money that was spent furthering the 

candidate’s election campaign, just like any other contribution. That is why repaying candidate 

loans does not fall afoul of the federal law’s separate prohibition, not challenged here, on the 

conversion of campaign funds to personal use. See supra, pp. 19–20. 

Indeed, where a candidate wishes to spend an extra $1,000 on his election campaign, the 

following two alternative transactions are, for all intents and purposes, completely identical: 

(1) the candidate makes a $1,000 loan to his campaign before the election, which 

is paid back by the campaign after the election because a contributor has made a 

$1,000 post-election donation; 

(2) the contributor makes a $1,000 contribution before the election, which relieves 

the candidate of the need of loaning the campaign $1,000 of his own money. 

Case 1:19-cv-00908-APM Document 29 Filed 06/28/19 Page 33 of 52
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In both cases, the candidate is able to spend the needed $1,000 on core political speech, and in 

both cases, the contribution allows the Candidate to spend $1,000 of his own money for purposes 

other than the campaign. Yet by the FEC’s lights, the second scenario raises no concerns 

whatsoever, but the first must be banned “to prevent the public’s confidence in the system of 

representative Government from being eroded to a disastrous extent.” Id. There is nothing to this. 

Finally, even ignoring all of these points and assuming that Section 304 validly serves to 

combat quid pro quo corruption for winning candidates like Senator Cruz, the provision still could 

not validly be applied to losing candidates—who no longer have the power to grant political favors 

in a quid pro quo return for post-election contributions. See Anderson, 356 F.3d at 673 (“[T]he 

risk of quid pro quo is virtually non-existent where the contribution is made to a losing candidate 

who seeks to recoup some of his debt.”). The FEC suggests that “incumbent candidates that lose 

are still officeholders for some time after their loss and other candidates who lose an election may 

be elected to federal office in the future.” MTD Br. 43. But at the very least, the notion that donors 

will contribute post-election funds as part of a quid pro quo deal to a lame duck officeholder is 

highly speculative at best—and it thus “cannot justify the substantial intrusion on First Amendment 

rights at issue in this case.” McCutcheon, 572 U.S. at 218. And while a losing candidate may of 

course “be elected to federal office in the future,” the same is true of every eligible citizen in the 

country, so this is hardly a justification for saddling additional limits on these losing candidates. 

The FEC argues that “[a]ny overbreadth of the Loan Repayment Restriction would be 

insubstantial in relation to its legitimate sweep,” given that Section 304, on its view, legitimately 

applies to all “winning candidates and is thus extensive.” MTD Br. 42. But on average, there are 

far more losers than winners in a contested election—there are currently 737 declared candidates 

Case 1:19-cv-00908-APM Document 29 Filed 06/28/19 Page 34 of 52
29 

for President in the 2020 election4

—so Section 304’s supposedly “legitimate sweep” is in fact 

swamped by its illegitimate application to 736 (so far) losing candidates. Defendants respond, 

citing Buckley, that “[i]n any case, courts have repeatedly upheld FECA restrictions that apply to 

all candidates against overbreadth challenges, even if the justification applied more to some 

candidates than others.” Id. at 43. But Buckley upheld FECA’s contribution limits even though 

“most large contributors do not seek improper influence” because it is “difficult to isolate suspect 

contributions” and “Congress was justified in concluding that the interest in safeguarding against 

the appearance of impropriety” required across-the-board limits. 424 U.S. at 29; see also 

McConnell v. FEC, 540 U.S. 93, 159–60 (2003) (rejecting line between minor and major parties 

as unrelated to the Government’s interest). Here, there is obviously no difficulty in determining 

who won and lost the election (that is a rather important feature of the system), and loan-repayment 

contributions to losing candidates simply do not raise any meaningful appearance of corruption. 

Section 304 is accordingly unconstitutional on its face, and Plaintiffs are likely to prevail 

in their challenge. At the very least, the First Amendment claims at issue are not “essentially 

fictitious,” Shapiro, 136 S. Ct. at 456, and that suffices to require a three-judge court. 

C. The Jurisdiction of the Three-Judge Court Required by Section 403 

Extends to Plaintiffs’ Challenge to FEC’s Implementing Regulations. 

Finally, Defendants are wrong to assert that counts 3, 4, and 5 of our complaint—the claims 

challenging the FEC’s implementing regulation, 11 C.F.R. § 116.11—are outside the three-judge 

court’s jurisdiction. As discussed above, the three-judge court provision that Congress included in 

BCRA unambiguously requires that where suit is brought “to challenge the constitutionality of any 

provision of this Act,” a three-judge court must be convened to hear “the action” as a whole. 52 

 4 Campaign Finance Data: Candidates 2020, FEC, https://bit.ly/2EAEJIM (last accessed 

June 27, 2019). 

Case 1:19-cv-00908-APM Document 29 Filed 06/28/19 Page 35 of 52
30 

U.S.C. § 30110 note. If Congress had wished to impose a narrower requirement, requiring threejudge consideration only of certain claims, it had before it several models of how to do so. Cf. S.J. 

Res. 46, 110th Cong., 122 Stat. 5036, Sec. 1(b)(2) (2008). But it chose not to limit Section 403 in 

this way, and this Court has no power to disregard that choice by disaggregating the action to target 

certain claims for single-judge adjudication.5

To be sure, in Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. v. FCC, a three-judge court of this District, 

over Judge Jackson’s dissent, rejected a similar argument in the context of the Cable Act’s threejudge court provision, due to the “burdens” it would inflict “on the federal judicial system.” 810 

F. Supp. 1308, 1312 (D.D.C. 1992). But that decision is not precedential. See Camreta, 563 U.S. 

at 709 n.7; see also San Diego Unified Port Dist. v. Gianturco, 651 F.2d 1306, 1315 n.24 (9th Cir. 

1981) (“When a district court is convened as a statutory three-judge panel, it still is sitting as a 

district court for purposes of stare decisis.”); In re Sealed Case, 838 F.2d 476, 491 n.24 (D.C. 

Cir.), rev’d on other grounds sub nom. Morrison v. Olson, 487 U.S. 654 (1988) (citing Gianturco). 

And given that “[i]t is Congress’s job to enact policy and it is this Court’s job to follow 

the policy Congress has prescribed,” SAS Inst., Inc. v. Iancu, 138 S. Ct. 1348, 1358 (2018), we 

respectfully submit that Judge Jackson’s reasoning is more persuasive than the majority’s. 

The FEC’s argument independently fails because quite apart from Section 403’s 

encompassing text, it has long been understood that where a three-judge court has been properly 

convened with respect to at least one claim, the court also has supplemental jurisdiction to 

adjudicate closely related claims. In Allee v. Medrano, 416 U.S. 802 (1974), for example, a three-

 5

 It is possible, we suppose, that if a claim challenging the constitutionality of BCRA were 

joined with a sufficient number of sufficiently unrelated claims, the unrelated claims would so 

predominate over the BCRA claim that the action would no longer be one “brought . . . to challenge 

the constitutionality of [BCRA].” But for the reasons discussed below, there is no place for such a 

concern here. See infra, p. 31. 

Case 1:19-cv-00908-APM Document 29 Filed 06/28/19 Page 36 of 52
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judge court convened under Section 2281 to consider an injunction invalidating certain Texas 

statutes also enjoined the defendants from enforcing other statutes, which were concededly 

constitutional, in a harassing manner. The Supreme Court rejected the defendants’ argument that 

this portion of the three-judge court’s decision was beyond its jurisdiction, holding that “it could 

properly consider” the broader challenge to the defendants’ intimidation and harassment “and 

grant relief in the exercise of jurisdiction ancillary to that conferred by the constitutional attack on 

the state statutes which plainly required a three-judge court.” Id. at 812. While this supplemental 

jurisdiction would not extend to a claim “completely unrelated to the basis on which the threejudge court was convened,” the claim in Allee was “intimately bound up with and ancillary to the 

remainder of the court’s judgment,” so supplemental jurisdiction was proper. Id. at 812 n.8; see 

also City of Rome, Ga. v. United States, 472 F. Supp. 221, 236 (D.D.C. 1979), aff’d, 446 U.S. 156 

(1980); Arizona v. Holder, 839 F. Supp. 2d 36, 39 (D.D.C. 2012); Adams v. Clinton, 40 F. Supp. 

2d 1, 4 (D.D.C. 1999); 28 U.S.C. § 1367 (granting supplemental jurisdiction). 

Supplemental jurisdiction is plainly appropriate in this case. As in Allee, the claims 

challenging 11 C.F.R. § 116.11 are “intimately bound up with” the constitutional challenge to the 

provision of BCRA it implements. The factual allegations underlying both sets of claims arise out 

of precisely the same 2018 candidate loans. The bulk of the challenge to the regulation is based on 

the claim that it suffers from precisely the same First Amendment infirmity as Section 304 of 

BCRA. Indeed, were Plaintiffs’ challenge to BCRA to succeed and Section 304 struck down as 

unconstitutional, the challenged regulation implementing that provision likewise could obviously 

no longer be enforced—giving Plaintiffs the very relief they seek in these claims. It would be 

senseless to disaggregate and separately adjudicate these claims in different courts—precisely the 

inefficient result the doctrine of supplemental jurisdiction is designed to avoid. 

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The cases the FEC cites do not dictate a different result. It notes that this Court in 

McConnell declined to consider the constitutionality of the regulations implementing a section of 

BCRA challenged in that case. But the Court’s reasoning in McConnell was principally based on 

ripeness concerns—it concluded that the regulations were “not properly before this Court” because 

they “were not final until after briefing and oral arguments in this case were completed.” 251 F. 

Supp. 2d 176, 260, 264 (D.D.C. 2003), aff’d in part, 540 U.S. 93 (2003). These ripeness concerns 

also motivated the Supreme Court’s affirmance of this determination. See McConnell, 540 U.S. at 

223. And, yes, Bluman v. FEC did adopt Defendants’ theory that “the FEC’s regulations are not 

appropriately challenged in a three-judge court” in declining to convene a three-judge court to 

consider an ancillary challenge to a regulation implementing a provision of BCRA, 766 F. Supp. 

2d 1, 4 (D.D.C. 2011), but that decision is not binding, see Camreta, 563 U.S. at 709 n.7. And the 

Bluman Court did not even consider the possibility that the three-judge court would have 

supplemental jurisdiction, so it provides no guidance whatsoever on that question. 

II. In Any Event, Defendants’ Challenge to Plaintiffs’ Standing Fails. 

As demonstrated above, see supra Part I. A, BCRA requires that Defendants’ Rule 12(b)(1) 

motion be adjudicated by a three-judge court, but their motion is doomed even if this Court 

nonetheless proceeds to decide the standing question, for Plaintiffs have standing to bring this case. 

A. Plaintiffs’ Injuries Are Not Self-Inflicted. 

The “irreducible constitutional minimum of standing contains three elements”: (1) injury 

in fact, which is “an invasion of a legally protected interest which is (a) concrete and particularized, 

and (b) actual or imminent”; (2) “a causal connection between the injury and the conduct 

complained of”; and (3) a likelihood “that the injury will be redressed by a favorable decision.” 

Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 560–61 (1992) (quotation marks and citations 

omitted). The FEC does not deny that Senator Cruz and the Cruz Committee have suffered injuryCase 1:19-cv-00908-APM Document 29 Filed 06/28/19 Page 38 of 52
33 

in-fact, nor that their injuries will be redressed by a favorable decision. Rather, it contends that 

Plaintiffs lack standing because their injuries are self-inflicted, an attack on the causation element 

of standing. That contention is mired in confusion. 

The Government is mistaken when it assumes that the Cruz Committee’s asserted injury is 

that it gained $10,000 of Senator Cruz’s money. MTD Br. 21. Rather, as previously discussed, the 

Committee’s injuries are two-fold. First, it did not want to pocket the Senator’s money; it wanted 

to repay its debt to the candidate in full, no less than it wanted to pay other creditors to whom it 

owed money, for that would incentivize Senator Cruz, no less than others, to extend credit to the 

Committee in the future. Compl. ¶ 33. By making such reimbursements more difficult, Section 

304 burdens the Committee’s First Amendment right to raise money. Second, by limiting when 

and how the Cruz Committee can reimburse the Senator while also meeting its obligations to pay 

its vendors and other creditors, the challenged limit also impermissibly burdens the Committee’s 

right to spend money on campaign speech. 

The FEC makes two arguments for why Senator Cruz and the Cruz Committee’s injuries 

are self-inflicted. First, the FEC asserts that Senator Cruz voluntarily courted his financial injury 

by loaning $260,000 to his campaign the day before the 2018 election. MTD Br. 15. Even leaving 

aside the fact that the Senator’s injection of funds into his campaign helped to ensure that the 

Committee’s creditors would be paid, the FEC misses the mark. The relevant injury for standing 

purposes is the Senator’s constitutional injury: the burden placed on his First Amendment right to 

spend money, in the form of a loan, to support his campaign imposed by the restrictions on the 

Committee’s use of post-election contributions to repay Senator Cruz’s loans. See In re U.S. Office 

of Pers. Mgmt. Data Sec. Breach Litig., 2019 WL 2552955, at *5 (D.C. Cir. June 21, 2019). By 

lending his campaign $260,000, Senator Cruz simply exercised a constitutional right. It is wellCase 1:19-cv-00908-APM Document 29 Filed 06/28/19 Page 39 of 52
34 

established that a plaintiff does not lose standing by voluntarily taking steps to exercise a 

constitutional right and thus bring about an injury to that right. 

“Standing is not defeated merely because the plaintiff has in some sense contributed to his 

own injury.” 13A WRIGHT & MILLER § 3531.5; Grocery Mfrs. Ass’n v. EPA, 693 F.3d 169, 189 

(D.C. Cir. 2012) (Kavanaugh, J., dissenting). It is not enough that a plaintiff “voluntarily” or 

“willfully” took some action resulted in his injury, Equal Rights Ctr. v. Post Props., Inc., 633 F.3d 

1136, 1140 (D.C. Cir. 2011) (alteration marks omitted), since “surely all judicially cognizable 

injuries can be traced back to some voluntary action of the plaintiff,” Hazardous Waste Treatment 

Council v. Thomas, 885 F.2d 918, 935 (D.C. Cir. 1989) (Wald, C.J., dissenting). Rather, a plaintiff 

lacks standing only if his injury is “so completely due to the [complainant’s] own fault as to break 

the causal chain.” Petro-Chem Processing, Inc. v. EPA, 866 F.2d 433, 438 (D.C. Cir. 1989) 

(alteration in original) (emphasis added). Where, instead, the defendant is engaged in an ongoing 

violation of constitutional or statutory rights, and a would-be plaintiff simply exercises the right 

that exposes himself to that violation, the injury is caused by the defendant, not the plaintiff. 

For example, in Havens Realty Corp. v. Coleman, two plaintiffs—one black and one 

white—inquired about the availability of apartments in buildings owned by the defendant. 455 

U.S. 363, 368 (1982). The black plaintiff did so “fully expecting that he would receive false 

information.” Id. at 374. The defendant, in violation of the Fair Housing Act, consistently told the 

black plaintiff that there were no apartments available and told the white plaintiff that there were 

vacancies. Id. at 368. The Supreme Court held that the black plaintiff’s voluntary decision to 

exercise his right to inquire about housing—knowing full well that he would be discriminated 

against—did not detract from the fact that he had “suffered ‘specific injury,’ ” such that “the Art. 

III requirement of injury in fact [was] satisfied.” Id. at 374 (citation omitted). 

Case 1:19-cv-00908-APM Document 29 Filed 06/28/19 Page 40 of 52
35 

By the same token, Senator Cruz’s decision to exercise his right to loan money to his 

campaign the day before the election—knowing full well that he was less likely to be fully 

reimbursed because of Section 304’s limits—does not diminish the fact that his First Amendment 

rights have been violated by Section 304 and its implementing regulations. “[W]hen an individual 

searches for and finds a violation of the law, it is the violation itself—not the search—that causes 

the plaintiff injury.” Kuehl v. Sellner, 887 F.3d 845, 851 (8th Cir. 2018). Senator Cruz did not 

create the First Amendment violation entailed by Section 304; the Federal Government did. 

Indeed, a contrary view would call into question several landmark cases striking down 

racial segregation and other forms of unconstitutional discrimination. The “diminished ability to 

receive an education in a racially integrated school . . . is, beyond any doubt, not only judicially 

cognizable but, as shown by Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954) . . . , one of the 

most serious injuries recognized in our legal system.” Allen v. Wright, 468 U.S. 737, 756 (1984). 

Yet the plaintiffs in Brown would not have had standing unless they had been “personally denied 

equal treatment by the challenged discriminatory conduct.” Id. at 755 (quotation marks omitted); 

see also Warth v. Seldin, 422 U.S. 490, 502 (1975). They therefore voluntarily sought, and were 

denied, “admission to schools attended by white children under laws requiring or permitting 

segregation according to race.” Brown, 347 U.S. at 487. Contrary to the FEC’s logic, the fact that 

the Brown plaintiffs willfully exposed themselves to their constitutional injury by voluntarily 

seeking admission to a segregated school—and experiencing the expected unconstitutional 

discrimination—did not defeat their standing; it created their standing. The injury they suffered 

was entirely and directly caused by the unconstitutional state laws imposing segregation that 

preexisted their voluntary action. 

Case 1:19-cv-00908-APM Document 29 Filed 06/28/19 Page 41 of 52
36 

For the same reasons, Senator Cruz’s subjective motivation for lending $260,000 to his 

campaign the day before the election is completely irrelevant to the standing analysis. In Havens, 

“[t]hat the tester may have approached the real estate agent fully expecting that he would receive 

false information, and without any intention of buying or renting a home, d[id] not negate the 

simple fact of injury.” 455 U.S. at 374; Fair Emp’t Council of Greater Washington, Inc. v. BMC 

Mktg. Corp., 28 F.3d 1268, 1272 (D.C. Cir. 1994) (“the testers merely posed as potential renters 

or purchasers”). Similarly, in Evers v. Dwyer, the Supreme Court held that an “actual controversy” 

existed even though the plaintiff voluntarily sat in the whites-only section of a municipal bus “for 

the purpose of instituting this litigation.” 358 U.S. 202, 203 (1958). The Court held that the 

plaintiff’s motivation was irrelevant. Id. at 204. So too here: it matters not at all why Senator Cruz 

loaned money to his campaign, even assuming the loans were designed to bring a test case. See 13 

WRIGHT & MILLER, § 3530 (“If actually adversary interests are involved, deliberate provocation 

of litigation does not defeat the existence of a controversy.”).6

Nothing in the FEC’s brief supports its argument. The only case cited by Defendants, J. 

Roderick MacArthur Foundation v. FBI, 102 F.3d 600 (D.C. Cir. 1996), does not even mention 

the role a plaintiff’s motivation plays in evaluating standing, and its discussion of self-inflicted 

injuries is fully consistent with our analysis. The claimed right in J. Roderick MacArthur 

Foundation “depend[ed] upon the FBI’s maintenance of a file on the Foundation being known to 

third parties,” id. at 606, but third parties would not have known about the file if the Foundation 

itself had not itself made the file public, thus creating an injury to the claimed right where one 

 6 See also WRIGHT & MILLER, § 3530 (“From its earliest days, the Supreme Court has 

decided cases plainly framed for the sole purpose of securing its disposition of legal questions . . . . 

It is widely supposed that some of its most famous constitutional decisions have likewise been 

rendered in deliberate test cases . . . .”). 

Case 1:19-cv-00908-APM Document 29 Filed 06/28/19 Page 42 of 52
37 

would otherwise not have existed. Here, Section 304’s limit on the repayment of candidate loans 

would violate the First Amendment even if Senator Cruz had never loaned money to his campaign. 

Senator Cruz’s loans did not create the violation of his First Amendment rights; rather, exercising 

his right to make those loans merely ensured that the First Amendment injury caused by Section 

304 was actualized, in the same way that a racial minority actualizes a preexisting constitutional 

violation by voluntarily subjecting himself to the racially discriminatory practice. J. Roderick 

MacArthur Foundation has no bearing on this case. 

The Government’s second self-infliction argument is that Plaintiffs “unnecessarily 

constructed the conditions necessary for their alleged injury” and “chose not to take legally 

available steps to avoid that injury.” MTD Br. 16. The FEC then spends several pages explaining 

how, if it had been running the Cruz Committee, it would have achieved the goal of fully 

reimbursing Senator Cruz’s loans while complying with Section 304 and its implementing 

regulations, and asserting that the Committee’s failure to do so was self-inflicted. Id. at 17–20. 

This argument is deeply flawed for at least two reasons.7

First, it again misconceives the injury at issue. The FEC focuses exclusively on Senator 

Cruz’s financial injury, but the relevant injury is Plaintiffs’ constitutional injury of being denied 

the use of post-election contributions to fully reimburse the Senator’s loans. The denial of those 

funds burdens their First Amendment rights even if, in this particular instance, they could have 

fully reimbursed the Senator’s loans without transgressing Section 304. Plaintiffs’ challenge is to 

the restrictions on their constitutional right to use post-election funds to reimburse Senator Cruz, 

 7

 This second argument necessarily assumes that the actions of the Cruz Committee may 

be freely attributed to Cruz himself—since otherwise, the Committee’s failure to pay off the loans 

with pre-election money could in no way be described as “self-inflicted” by Cruz. While the FEC 

cites no authority to establish this premise, we assume it for the sake of the analysis below. 

Case 1:19-cv-00908-APM Document 29 Filed 06/28/19 Page 43 of 52
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and they cannot forfeit standing by failing to use pre-election funds for that purpose. A plaintiff 

does not forfeit standing because he does not conform his conduct to the very law whose 

constitutionality he challenges. 

For example, suppose a city prohibits all Republicans—and only Republicans—from 

speaking in public parks on Sundays. If a Republican who was prevented from speaking on Sunday 

challenged the law, it would be no answer to say that he could have spoken Monday through 

Saturday. Because he had a constitutional right against such discrimination, the Republican has 

still been injured by the denial of his right to speak on Sunday. Moreover, he did not “self-inflict” 

his injury by insisting on speaking on Sunday; the city’s law injured him by unconstitutionally 

prohibiting him from speaking on Sunday. See Becker v. FEC, 230 F.3d 381, 388 (1st Cir. 2000). 

So too here: because Senator Cruz and the Cruz Committee have a constitutional right to use postelection funds to fully reimburse the Senator’s loans, they are still injured even if they could have 

done so with pre-election funds, and they did not “self-inflict” their injury by exercising their right 

to use only post-election funds.8

This is the same principle that the D.C. Circuit relied on in rejecting a self-inflicted-injury 

argument in City of Jersey City v. Consolidated Rail Corp., 668 F.3d 741 (D.C. Cir. 2012). In that 

case, Jersey City wanted to purchase property owned by Consolidated Rail, but Consolidated Rail 

sold the property to private developers instead. Id. at 743–44. The City sued, alleging that the sale 

was void for violating a federal statute guaranteeing the City the right of first refusal in purchasing 

the property. Id. at 744–45. Consolidated Rail argued that the City’s injury was self-inflicted 

 8

 The Government therefore misunderstands the issue when it says: “Plaintiffs’ preference 

to use post-election contributions to repay Cruz’s $10,000 in violation of federal law instead does 

not constitute an injury that confers standing.” MTD Br. 17. Plaintiffs have a right to use postelection contributions to repay the Senator’s loans, so they had no obligation to abjure that right to 

conform to Section 304 and its implementing regulations. 

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because it had passed on two previous opportunities to purchase the property. Id. at 746; see also 

City of Jersey City v. Consol. Rail Corp., 741 F. Supp. 2d 131, 142 (D.D.C. 2010). Although the 

District Court agreed with Consolidated Rail and dismissed the suit, id., the D.C. Circuit reversed, 

holding that the City had standing because “the fact that the City could have purchased the property 

in no way absolve[d] Conrail of its legal duty” to accord the City procedural protections. 668 F.3d 

at 746. Critical to the D.C. Circuit’s conclusion was its assumption, for purposes of standing, that 

the City did have a right to the procedural protections it claimed. Id. Here, even if the Cruz 

Committee could have reimbursed Senator Cruz using pre-election funds, that “in no way absolves 

[the FEC] of its legal duty” to permit the Cruz Committee to fully reimburse Senator Cruz using 

post-election funds, id. at 746, since (as this Court must assume, for purposes of standing) Plaintiffs 

have a constitutional right to use post-election funds to reimburse the Senator. 

A similar principle animated Libertarian National Committee. There, a deceased member 

of the Libertarian Party bequeathed $235,575.20 to the Libertarian National Committee 

(“LNC”)—well above the annual contribution limit of $33,400. 924 F.3d at 536. The LNC could 

have accepted the bequest all at once by placing $33,400 in its general treasury and placing the 

rest in segregated accounts that limited the purposes for which the funds could be spent, but the 

LNC did not want to impose restrictions on the funds by placing them in the segregated accounts. 

Id. Claiming that it had a First Amendment right to accept the entire bequest without the spending 

restrictions imposed on the segregated accounts, the LNC sued. The FEC argued that the LNC 

lacked standing because it could have accepted the bequest all at once via the segregated accounts, 

but as the D.C. Circuit observed in rejecting that argument, the FEC misunderstood the nature of 

the LNC’s injury: “[T]he LNC’s injury stems not from its inability to accept the entire bequest 

immediately (which it could have done), but rather from the committee’s inability to accept 

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40 

[immediately] the entire bequest for general expressive purposes (which FECA prohibits).” Id. at 

538 (quotation marks omitted) (alteration in original). Because the LNC claimed—and the D.C. 

Circuit had to assume—a constitutional right to accept the bequest into an unrestricted account, 

the LNC could not be said to have inflicted an injury on itself by refusing to accept the bequest 

into restricted accounts. In the same way, because Plaintiffs here claim (and have) a constitutional 

right to use exclusively post-election funds to repay Senator Cruz’s loans in full, they cannot be 

said to have inflicted an injury on themselves by not using pre-election funds for that purpose. 

The FEC tries to distinguish Libertarian National Committee by pointing out that the D.C. 

Circuit framed the LNC’s choice as being between “the lesser of two evils,” id., while in this case, 

according to the FEC, “plaintiffs voluntarily chose to forego an option with no ‘evil’ attached to it 

at all: using its cash on hand to repay Cruz’s $10,000 debt.” MTD Br. 19 n.13. But Section 304 

and its implementing regulations did place Plaintiffs in the position of choosing between two evils: 

foregoing their constitutional right to use exclusively post-election contributions to reimburse 

Senator Cruz or failing to fully reimburse Senator Cruz. 

Third, the Government essentially argues that Plaintiffs lack standing because they did not 

spend campaign funds in the sequence the Government thinks they should have: by prioritizing 

the use of pre-election funds to reimburse Senator Cruz. The FEC devotes several pages of its brief 

to criticizing the Cruz Committee for various spending decisions it made after the election, MTD 

Br. 17, 19–20, but the FEC cannot defeat Plaintiffs’ standing by complaining that the Cruz 

Committee did not exercise its First Amendment rights the way the Government thinks best. “[I]t 

is an injury in itself to avoid lawful conduct—viz., [reimbursing the Senator with post-election 

contributions]—in order to avoid the application of an allegedly unlawful Rule.” United States v. 

Supreme Court of New Mexico, 839 F.3d 888, 902–03 (10th Cir. 2016). 

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LaRoque v. Holder, 650 F.3d 777 (D.C. Cir. 2011), is an example of this principle. In that 

case, the electorate of the city of Kinston, North Carolina, voted to change its municipal elections 

from a partisan to a nonpartisan system. Id. at 96. The Attorney General blocked implementation 

of that change under the preclearance provisions of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. Id. John 

Nix, a Republican who wanted to run for office under the nonpartisan system due to Kinston’s 

majority-Democratic electorate, challenged the constitutionality of Section 5. Id. at 783, 786. The 

Government argued that Nix’s injury was self-inflicted, but the D.C. Circuit held otherwise: “Nix 

could avoid the alleged electoral disadvantages of the partisan system only by running as a 

Democrat. But given Nix’s First Amendment right to freedom of association, that option cannot 

possibly provide a basis for depriving him of standing.” Id. at 789. 

The same is true here: the Cruz Committee had a First Amendment right to prioritize its 

spending of pre-election contributions by paying vendors and other creditors rather than 

reimbursing Senator Cruz, and the Government cannot demand that the Committee give up that 

right to avoid the financial injury resulting from an unconstitutional statute. “[T]he need to take 

such affirmative steps to avoid the risk of harm . . . constitutes a cognizable injury.” Meese v. 

Keene, 481 U.S. 465, 475 (1987) (plaintiff could have “minimized” the harm inflicted by a statute 

by speaking a message he did not wish to speak, but still had standing to challenge the statute). 

The Government discusses three cases—and cites several more—for the proposition that 

self-inflicted injuries do not give rise to Article III standing, but none of these cases is on-point. 

In National Family Planning & Reproductive Health Association, Inc. v. Gonzales, the 

plaintiff alleged that a statute and a regulation were in conflict, such that the plaintiff’s members 

did not know how to comply with both without jeopardizing their federal funding. 468 F.3d 826, 

829 (D.C. Cir. 2006). The D.C. Circuit pointed out that the plaintiff could have asked the agency 

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that promulgated the regulation how to reconcile it with the statute but had failed to do so. Id. at 

831. “As the association has chosen to remain in the lurch, it cannot demonstrate an injury 

sufficient to confer standing.” Id. But the nature of the claim in Gonzales is different from the one 

here. The Gonzales plaintiff did not claim a right not to ask the agency to clarify its interpretation 

of the statute and regulation; here, Plaintiffs do claim a right not to be forced to use pre-election 

contributions to reimburse Senator Cruz. While the Government could demand that the Gonzales

plaintiff resolve its alleged injury by asking the agency for clarification, the Government cannot 

demand that the Cruz Committee use pre-election funds to reimburse the Senator, since that is 

precisely what Plaintiffs claim they have a constitutional right not to do. 

Huron v. Berry, 12 F. Supp. 3d 46 (D.D.C. 2013), is distinguishable for similar reasons. 

There, the plaintiff alleged that it was illegal for his government healthcare plan to refuse to cover 

a particular medical device, but before filing suit, “Huron and his family had three 

opportunities . . . to transfer from their [healthcare] plan to one of several other [healthcare] plans 

with [the medical device] coverage.” Id. at 52–53. Because the plaintiff selected a plan without 

coverage for the device he needed despite the availability of other plans covering the device—and 

chose to remain in that plan despite multiple opportunities to transfer to a new plan—his injury 

was self-inflicted. Id. at 53. But, again, the nature of the injury in Huron was quite different from 

the nature of the injury here. The plaintiff in Huron was injured by his inability to afford his 

medical device without insurance coverage. Id. at 51. Because any insurance plan that covered his 

device would redress his injury, his decision not to choose a plan with coverage meant that his 

injury was self-inflicted. By contrast, Plaintiffs in this case are injured by their inability to use 

post-election contributions to fully reimburse Senator Cruz, and that injury cannot be redressed by 

pointing to other sources of funds that could have been used to reimburse the Senator. 

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 Stop This Insanity Inc. Employee Leadership Fund v. FEC, 761 F.3d 10 (D.C. Cir. 2014) 

(“STII”), is even further afield. The plaintiff in that case willingly formed a type of political action 

committee that imposed more restrictions on its independent expenditures and solicitations than 

other forms of organization, yet it argued that the First Amendment required strict scrutiny of those 

restrictions under Citizens United. STII, 761 F.3d at 12–13. The D.C. Circuit pointed to the selfimposed nature of these restrictions as part of its evaluation of the merits—specifically, the 

applicable level of scrutiny—not the plaintiff’s standing. Id. at 14–15. Indeed, the D.C. Circuit did 

not question the plaintiff’s standing in that case. STII is therefore irrelevant for that reason alone. 

Moreover, STII did not assert a constitutional right to choose its more-restrictive form of 

organization, so it could be faulted for making its life more difficult. By contrast, Plaintiffs here 

claim that they do have a constitutional right to use post-election contributions to fully reimburse 

Senator Cruz, so they cannot be faulted for exercising that constitutional right. 

 The Government’s other cases are similarly inapposite, which is presumably why the FEC 

spends so little time on them. See MTD Br. 16 n.12. McConnell, 540 U.S. at 228, Grocery 

Manufacturers’ Ass’n v. EPA, 693 F.3d 169, 177–78 (D.C. Cir. 2012), and Petro-Chem 

Processing, 866 F.2d at 438, all involved challenges to laws that permitted the plaintiffs to take 

some action that they did not wish to take. Here, by contrast, Plaintiffs are challenging laws that 

forbid them from taking an action that they do wish to take: using post-election contributions to 

fully reimburse Senator Cruz. The former cases involved injuries stemming from ideological 

commitments (McConnell) or economic competition (Grocery Manufacturers; Petro-Chem);9

 this 

 9

 As Huron recognized, Grocery Manufacturers and Petro-Chem stand for the proposition 

that “economic considerations that cause an individual to reject a certain option because it is less 

favorable in some ways and more favorable in others does not transform an otherwise voluntary 

decision into a coerced one.” 12 F. Supp. 3d at 53. 

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case involves constitutional injury (i.e., the inability to use post-election contributions to fully 

reimburse a candidate) caused directly by Section 304 and its implementing regulations.10 There 

is no comparison between these cases and this one. 

B. Plaintiffs Have Standing To Bring Their Overbreadth Claim. 

Finally, the FEC seeks dismissal of Plaintiffs’ claim that the challenged provisions violate 

the First Amendment rights of contributors. Plaintiffs “do not have standing to assert constitutional 

claims on behalf of these hypothetical potential donors,” FEC says, since there is no “barrier” 

impeding those contributors from bringing suit themselves, and the criteria for “third party 

standing” thus cannot be satisfied. MTD Br. 20–22. Defendants misunderstand the nature of our 

challenge on behalf of contributors. We do not assert “third party standing” to raise those potential 

donors’ constitutional rights in a representative capacity; rather, our claim that Section 304 violates 

their rights is an overbreadth challenge. The overbreadth doctrine is a “departure from traditional 

rules of standing,” allowing plaintiffs “to challenge a statute not because their own rights of free 

expression are violated, but because of a judicial prediction or assumption that the statute’s very 

existence may cause others not before the court to refrain from constitutionally protected speech 

or expression,” Broadrick v. Oklahoma, 413 U.S. 601, 612, 613 (1973); see also Dombrowski v. 

Pfister, 380 U.S. 479, 486 (1965). The Supreme Court, accordingly, has squarely held that “where 

the claim is that a statute is overly broad in violation of the First Amendment, . . . a party [may] 

 10 Afifi v. Lynch, 101 F. Supp. 3d 90, 110 (D.D.C. 2015), is distinguishable for the same 

reason as J. Roderick MacArthur Foundation: the injury in Afifi could only have come into 

existence via the voluntary action of the plaintiff, whereas the injury in this case (i.e., the 

diminished likelihood that a candidate will be reimbursed for money spent on his campaign) is 

ongoing and preexisted the voluntary action of the Plaintiffs. 

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assert the rights of another without regard to the ability of the other to assert his own claims,” 

Secretary of State of Md. v. Joseph H. Munson Co., 467 U.S. 947, 957 (1984).11 

Of course, the plaintiff in an overbreadth challenge must still “satisf[y] the requirement of 

‘injury-in-fact.’ ” Id. at 958. But as shown above, supra Part II.A, both of the Plaintiffs in this case 

easily clear this threshold. 

Finally, the FEC urges that standing should be denied because “it seems highly unlikely 

that any such potential donors even exist.” MTD Br. 21. Not so. As explained above, there is a 

definite class of contributors who are injured by Section 304’s limits: those who wish to contribute, 

after an election, to a candidate whose only “net debts outstanding” are comprised of personal 

loans in excess of the $250,000 limit. See supra, p. 23. For individuals in this profile, Section 304 

amounts to a cap on their contributions to that candidate, preventing them from engaging in 

protected speech and association. There is no question that there are candidates, and contributors, 

who meet this description (if not, then Section 304 serves no function whatsoever). 

CONCLUSION 

For the foregoing reasons, the Court should deny Defendants’ Motion to Dismiss and 

should convene a three-judge court pursuant to BCRA § 403 and 28 U.S.C. § 2284(b). 

 11 For the same reason, Plaintiffs may raise an overbreadth claim on behalf of losing 

candidates without showing that they have a “close relation” to such candidates or that those 

candidates “could not bring [their] own lawsuit.” MTD Br. 23 n.17. 

Case 1:19-cv-00908-APM Document 29 Filed 06/28/19 Page 51 of 52
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Dated: June 28, 2019 Respectfully submitted, 

Chris Gober 

 (D.C. Bar No. 975981) 

The Gober Group PLLC 

3595 RR 620 S., Suite 200 

Austin, TX 78738 

(512) 354-1787 

s/ Charles J. Cooper 

Charles J. Cooper 

 (D.C. Bar No. 248070) 

John D. Ohlendorf 

 (D.C. Bar. No. 1024544) 

J. Joel Alicea 

 (D.C. Bar. No. 1022784) 

COOPER & KIRK, PLLC 

1523 New Hampshire Avenue, N.W. 

Washington, D.C. 20036 

(202) 220-9600 

(202) 220-9601 (facsimile) 

ccooper@cooperkirk.com 

Attorneys for Plaintiffs 

Case 1:19-cv-00908-APM Document 29 Filed 06/28/19 Page 52 of 52