ORAL ARGUMENT SCHEDULED FOR JANUARY 27, 2010 

Nos. 08-5223; 09-5342 

IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS 

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT 

SPEECHNOW.ORG, et al. 

Plaintiffs-Appellants, 

v. 

FEDERAL ELECTION COMMISSION 

Defendant-Appellee. 

On Questions Certified by the United States District Court 

for the District of Columbia; No. 08-cv-00248 (JR) 

BRIEF OF AMICI CURIAE 

CAMPAIGN LEGAL CENTER AND DEMOCRACY 21 

SUPPORTING THE FEDERAL ELECTION COMMISSION 

_____________________________________ 

J. Gerald Hebert 

Tara Malloy 

Paul S. Ryan 

THE CAMPAIGN LEGAL CENTER

215 E Street, NE 

Washington, DC 20002 

(202) 736-2200 

Counsel for the Campaign Legal Center 

Scott L. Nelson 

PUBLIC CITIZEN LITIGATION GROUP

1600 20th Street, N.W. 

Washington, DC 20009 

(202) 588-1000

Counsel for Amici Curiae 

Donald J. Simon 

SONOSKY, CHAMBERS, SACHSE, 

 ENDRESON & PERRY, LLP 

1425 K Street, N.W., Suite 600 

Washington, DC 20005 

(202) 682-0240 

Counsel for Democracy 21 

Fred Wertheimer 

DEMOCRACY 21 

1875 I Street, N.W., Suite 500 

Washington, DC 20005 

(202) 429-2008

Counsel for Democracy 21 

 December 15, 2009 

 

Case: 09-5342 Document: 1220811 Filed: 12/15/2009 Page: 1
 - i - 

CERTIFICATE OF COUNSEL FOR AMICI CURIAE AS TO PARTIES, 

RULINGS AND RELATED CASES UNDER CIRCUIT RULE 28(a)(1) 

Pursuant to Rules 28(a)(1) and 26.1 of this Court and FRAP 26.1, amici 

curiae Campaign Legal Center and Democracy 21 certify as follows: 

A. Parties and Amici

The parties in the district court were plaintiffs SpeechNow.org, David 

Keating, Fred M. Young, Jr., Edward H. Crane, III, Brad Russo, and Scott 

Burkhardt, and defendant Federal Election Commission. All parties below except 

SpeechNow.org are parties before this Court on the questions certified by the 

district court. Amici curiae in the district court were Democracy 21 and the 

Campaign Legal Center (CLC). Amici curiae in this Court are Democracy 21 and 

the CLC, in support of the FEC, as well as the Alliance for Justice, the Family 

Research Council Action, the Concerned Women for America Legislative Action 

Fund, the Kansas Policy Institute, the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, the 

Caesar Rodney Institute, FreedomWorks Foundation, the James Madison Institute, 

the Public Interest Institute, and the Commonwealth Foundation for Public Policy 

Alternatives, in support of the plaintiffs. 

B. Corporate Disclosure Statement 

The CLC is a nonprofit, nonpartisan corporation. The CLC has no parent 

corporation and no publicly held corporation has any form of ownership interest in 

the CLC. Democracy 21 is a nonprofit, nonpartisan corporation. Democracy 21 

Case: 09-5342 Document: 1220811 Filed: 12/15/2009 Page: 2
 - ii - 

has no parent corporation and no publicly held corporation has any form of 

ownership interest in Democracy 21. 

C. Rulings Under Review 

The rulings under review are the findings of fact and certified questions 

issued by the Hon. James Robertson on October 7, 2009. The certified questions 

for review by this Court are set forth in the Joint Appendix (J.A.) at pp. 372-99. 

D. Related Cases 

The only related case pending in this Court or in any other court of which 

counsel for amici are aware is the appeal from the opinion and order issued July 1, 

2008, by the Hon. James Robertson in the same case, denying Plaintiffs’ Motion 

for Preliminary Injunction. The district court’s opinion denying the preliminary 

injunction is reported as SpeechNow.org v. FEC, 567 F. Supp. 2d 70 (D.D.C. 

2008), and the appeal is pending in this Court as No. 08-5223 and has been 

consolidated with the certified questions for consideration by the en banc Court. 

Case: 09-5342 Document: 1220811 Filed: 12/15/2009 Page: 3
 - iii - 

TABLE OF CONTENTS 

Page 

CERTIFICATE OF COUNSEL FOR AMICI CURIAE.............................................i 

TABLE OF AUTHORITIES ....................................................................................iv 

INTEREST OF AMICI CURIAE ...............................................................................1 

SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT .................................................................................2 

ARGUMENT .............................................................................................................5 

I. The EMILY’s List Opinion Wrongly Equates Contribution Limits with 

Expenditure Limits. .........................................................................................5 

A. Contributions Are Not Fully Protected Speech.....................................5 

B. The Lesser Protection Afforded to Contributions Is Not Limited 

to Contributions to Candidates and Parties. ..........................................8 

C. The Right to Spend Does Not Imply a Right to Raise Money 

Through Unlimited Individual Contributions. ....................................10 

D. Limits on the Amounts Individuals May Contribute to Political 

Committees to Support Campaign Expenditures Are 

Contribution Limits, Not Spending Limits. ........................................16 

II. EMILY’s List Improperly Confines the Anti-Corruption Interest 

Supporting Contribution Limits to the Prevention of Quid Pro Quo 

Exchanges. .....................................................................................................19 

III. Analyzed Correctly, and Without Reliance on EMILY’s List’s

Erroneous Reasoning, Contribution Limits Applicable to Political 

Committees That Engage in Independent Expenditures Are 

Constitutional.................................................................................................21 

CONCLUSION........................................................................................................26 

Case: 09-5342 Document: 1220811 Filed: 12/15/2009 Page: 4
 - iv - 

TABLE OF AUTHORITIES 

Cases: Page(s) 

* Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1 (1976)............... 3, 5, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17, 25 

 Buckley v. Am. Constitutional Law Found., 525 U.S. 182 (1999) .........................12 

 

* California Medical Association v. FEC, 453 U.S. 182 (1981)......................4, 10, 13 

 

* Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Co., 129 S. Ct. 2252 (2009)..............................25, 26 

 

 Citizens Against Rent Control v. City of Berkeley, 454 U.S. 290 

(1981).......................................................................................................11, 14 

 

 Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Comm. v. FEC, 518 U.S. 

604 (1996)......................................................................................................12 

 

 EMILY’s List v. FEC, 581 F.3d 1 (D.C. Cir. 2009).... 1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 10, 13, 14, 16, 19 

 

 FEC v. Beaumont, 539 U.S. 146 (2003) ................................................................4, 8 

 

 FEC v. Massachusetts Citizens for Life, Inc., 479 U.S. 238 (1986)..............4, 10, 15 

 

 FEC v. National Conservative Political Action Committee, 470 U.S. 

480 (1985)......................................................................................4, 11, 19, 24 

 

 FEC v. Wisconsin Right to Life, 551 U.S. 449 (2007).............................................18 

First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, 435 U.S. 765 (1978) .............................12 

 

 Marks v. United States, 430 U.S. 188 (1977)..........................................................13 

 

* McConnell v. FEC, 540 U.S. 93 (2003)...... 4, 7, 8, 12, 13, 14, 18, 20, 22, 23, 24, 26 

 

 Nixon v. Shrink Missouri Government PAC, 528 U.S. 377 (2000) .........................20 

 

 Randall v. Sorrell, 548 U.S. 230 (2006) ..............................................................8, 12 

Case: 09-5342 Document: 1220811 Filed: 12/15/2009 Page: 5
 - v - 

Statutes and Regulations: 

Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, Pub. L. No. 107-155, 

116 Stat. 81 (2002) .......................................................................................17 

Federal Election Campaign Act, 2 U.S.C. §§ 431 et seq...........................................2 

11 C.F.R. § 106.6(c)...................................................................................................2 

11 C.F.R. § 106.6(f) ...................................................................................................2 

* Authorities chiefly relied upon are marked with an asterisk in the margin. 

Case: 09-5342 Document: 1220811 Filed: 12/15/2009 Page: 6
INTEREST OF AMICI CURIAE

The Campaign Legal Center and Democracy 21 are nonpartisan, non-profit 

organizations with a long history of supporting the Nation’s campaign finance laws 

as an important bulwark against corruption and the appearance of corruption in the 

political process. Both groups have frequently participated as parties or amici in 

litigation to defend the constitutionality of the campaign finance laws. 

With the consent of the parties, amici previously filed a brief in No. 08-

5223, the appeal to a panel of this Court from the district court’s denial of 

preliminary injunctive relief. Subsequently, this Court granted amici leave to file 

an additional brief in No. 09-5342, addressing the district court’s certification of 

questions to the en banc Court. See Order of November 5, 2009. This Order 

provided that amici’s first brief to the panel would also be submitted to the en banc 

Court, as part of the consolidation of the preliminary injunction appeal with the 

certified questions. 

Therefore, this brief does not repeat arguments amici have already made in 

their brief in the preliminary injunction appeal, but focuses on an issue that will 

necessarily be before the en banc Court as it considers the constitutional issues 

presented by this case—namely, whether the opinion of a panel of this Court in 

EMILY’s List v. FEC, 581 F.3d 1 (D.C. Cir. 2009), represents a correct discussion 

and application of the principles governing the constitutionality of contribution 

Case: 09-5342 Document: 1220811 Filed: 12/15/2009 Page: 7
- 2 - 

limits applicable to political committees that engage in independent campaign 

expenditures. Indeed, that issue is particularly appropriate for consideration by the 

en banc Court because the panel opinion in EMILY’s List must currently be treated 

as authoritative by other panels of this Court, but need not be so regarded by the 

Court sitting en banc. 

SUMMARY OF ARGUMENT 

In arguing that individual contributions to organizations engaged in 

independent electoral advocacy cannot constitutionally be subjected to any

limitation, SpeechNow.org understandably relies heavily on the panel opinion in 

EMILY’s List.

1

 That case involved a challenge to FEC regulations that required 

political committees not connected to particular candidates or parties to allocate 

certain political expenditures between their “hard-money” and “soft-money” 

accounts—hard-money accounts being those containing funds donated within the 

contribution limits established by the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA), 2 

U.S.C. §§ 431 et seq., and soft-money accounts being those containing funds not 

subject to FECA limitations. See 11 C.F.R. §§ 106.6(c), (f). 

 

1

 The plaintiffs in this case included SpeechNow.org and individuals who 

desire to contribute to that organization. Although SpeechNow.org is a party to the 

companion appeal from the denial of a preliminary injunction (No. 08-5223), it is 

not technically a party to the en banc Court’s consideration of the questions 

certified by the district court. For convenience, however, we refer to the plaintiffs 

collectively as “SpeechNow.org.” 

Case: 09-5342 Document: 1220811 Filed: 12/15/2009 Page: 8
- 3 - 

The panel in EMILY’s List struck down the challenged regulations, and did 

so on the broadest possible basis: the panel held that a political committee may not 

be required to allocate any portion of any of its independent political expenditures 

to a hard-money account because, in the panel’s view, it is always unconstitutional 

to limit individual contributions to nonprofit organizations (other than political 

parties and candidate campaign committees) for use in independent political 

advocacy. The panel summed up its holding in these words: 

Under the Supreme Court’s precedents, non-profit entities may be 

required to use their hard-money accounts for their own contributions to 

candidates and parties and for an appropriately tailored share of 

administrative expenses associated with such contributions. But ... nonprofits may not be forced to use their hard-money accounts for 

expenditures such as advertisements, get-out-the-vote efforts, and voter 

registration drives. Non-profits—like individual citizens—are entitled to 

spend and raise unlimited money for those activities. 

581 F.3d at 16. 

The en banc Court in this case should not follow the reasoning of the panel 

opinion in EMILY’s List—and, indeed, should affirmatively repudiate it—because 

that reasoning is fundamentally at odds with the Supreme Court’s campaign 

finance jurisprudence from Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1 (1976), down to the 

present. The principal, and pervasive, flaw in the constitutional analysis of the 

EMILY’s List panel is that it conflates contributions with expenditures. In so 

doing, it misinterprets precedents to hold that if an organization is entitled to spend

money on electoral advocacy without limitation, it must therefore also be entitled 

Case: 09-5342 Document: 1220811 Filed: 12/15/2009 Page: 9
- 4 - 

to raise money without any limitation on either the total amount it may raise, or on 

the amount that may be raised from any given contributor. 

EMILY’s List reaches its result by misreading or disregarding the holdings of 

numerous Supreme Court opinions, including not only Buckley, but also California 

Medical Association v. FEC, 453 U.S. 182 (1981), FEC v. Massachusetts Citizens 

for Life, Inc., 479 U.S. 238 (1986) (MCFL), FEC v. National Conservative 

Political Action Committee, 470 U.S. 480 (1985) (NCPAC), FEC v. Beaumont, 539 

U.S. 146 (2003), and McConnell v. FEC, 540 U.S. 93 (2003). The failure of the 

EMILY’s List’s panel to follow those precedents extends not only to its disregard of 

the consistent distinction they draw between the differing constitutional protections 

afforded to contributions and expenditures, but also to an unduly narrow view of 

the governmental interests that can justify limits on political contributions. 

In considering the validity of the basic provisions of FECA at issue here, 

which limit individual contributions to political committees that make independent 

expenditures in connection with federal elections, the en banc Court should 

disregard the misguided constitutional analysis of EMILY’s List. Under a proper 

application of the controlling constitutional standards, in contrast to those set out in 

EMILY’s List, the contribution limits at issue here do not violate the First 

Amendment. 

Case: 09-5342 Document: 1220811 Filed: 12/15/2009 Page: 10
- 5 - 

ARGUMENT 

I. The EMILY’s List Opinion Wrongly Equates Contribution Limits 

with Expenditure Limits. 

A. Contributions Are Not Fully Protected Speech. 

The panel opinion in EMILY’s List fundamentally erred in equating a 

person’s First Amendment interest in directly engaging in his own political speech 

with the very different interest in contributing money to finance speech by others. 

This error infected most of the Court’s analysis, especially its consistent 

misinterpretation of opinions that recognize that a group’s expenditures may not be 

limited as also implying that the group must therefore be permitted to accept 

contributions of unlimited amounts from others. 

The EMILY’s List opinion goes off-track at the very beginning of its 

constitutional analysis, when it asserts as the first of the “overarching principles” 

governing the case that “the [Supreme] Court has held that campaign contributions 

and expenditures constitute ‘speech’ within the protection of the First 

Amendment.” 581 F.3d at 5. In support, the opinion cites language from 

“Buckley, the foundational case,” id., but the quoted passage in fact says something 

quite different – that “contribution and expenditure limitations operate in an area of 

the most fundamental First Amendment activities.” Buckley, 424 U.S. at 14. 

Establishing that contribution and expenditure limitations have First 

Amendment implications, however, only poses, and does not itself answer, the 

Case: 09-5342 Document: 1220811 Filed: 12/15/2009 Page: 11
- 6 - 

question of what those implications are. And on that question, the Buckley Court 

gave quite different answers for expenditures and contributions. As for the former, 

the Court held that expenditure limitations “impose direct and substantial restraints 

on the quantity of political speech,” id. at 39, and the level of scrutiny the Court 

imposed on such restrictions—which it described as “the exacting scrutiny 

applicable to limitations on core First Amendment rights of political expression,” 

id. at 44-45—effectively equated direct political expenditures with speech. 

As to contributions, however, the Buckley Court took a different approach 

altogether. The Court emphasized fundamental differences between contribution 

and expenditure limitations and rejected a direct equation of contributions and 

speech: 

By contrast with a limitation upon expenditures for political expression, a 

limitation upon the amount that any one person or group may contribute 

to a candidate or political committee entails only a marginal restriction 

upon the contributor’s ability to engage in free communication. A 

contribution serves as a general expression of support for the candidate 

and his views, but does not communicate the underlying basis for the 

support. The quantity of communication by the contributor does not 

increase perceptibly with the size of his contribution, since the expression 

rests solely on the undifferentiated, symbolic act of contributing. At 

most, the size of the contribution provides a very rough index of the 

intensity of the contributor’s support for the candidate. A limitation on 

the amount of money a person may give to a candidate or campaign 

organization thus involves little direct restraint on his political 

communication, for it permits the symbolic expression of support 

evidenced by a contribution but does not in any way infringe the 

contributor’s freedom to discuss candidates and issues. While 

contributions may result in political expression if spent by a candidate or 

an association to present views to the voters, the transformation of 

Case: 09-5342 Document: 1220811 Filed: 12/15/2009 Page: 12
- 7 - 

contributions into political debate involves speech by someone other than 

the contributor. 

Id. at 20-21 (footnote omitted) (emphasis added). In short, Buckley recognized that 

contributions are not themselves speech by the contributor, though they “facilitate 

speech by their recipients.” McConnell, 540 U.S. at 135. 

Moreover, Buckley emphasized that the principal effect of contribution 

limitations was not to restrict speech by contributors, but to “limit one important 

means of associating with a candidate or [political] committee,” 424 U.S. at 22, 

and thus that the primary First Amendment issue posed by contribution limitations 

is the limited restriction they impose on “one aspect of the contributor’s freedom of 

political association.” Id. at 24. Accordingly, Buckley subjected contribution 

limitations to a significantly less stringent standard of scrutiny than that applicable 

to direct restraints on speech. Id. at 25. 

Although the EMILY’s List opinion correctly observes that the Supreme 

Court “has never strayed” from the “cardinal tenet” of Buckley, see 581 F.3d at 5, 

it is dead wrong in suggesting that Buckley’s tenet is the simplistic and 

undifferentiated slogan that “money is speech.” See id. Rather, the “cardinal 

tenet” that has remained unchanged through the Court’s otherwise evolving 

campaign finance jurisprudence is the principle that contribution limits do not 

restrict speech in the same way or to the same degree that the Court has held 

expenditure limits do. 

Case: 09-5342 Document: 1220811 Filed: 12/15/2009 Page: 13
- 8 - 

Thus, in FEC v. Beaumont, the Court reiterated that “[g]oing back to 

Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1 (1976), restrictions on political contributions have 

been treated as merely ‘marginal’ speech restrictions subject to relatively 

complaisant review under the First Amendment, because contributions lie closer to 

the edges than to the core of political expression.” 539 U.S. at 161. The Court 

made exactly the same point in McConnell, 540 U.S. at 134-36, again emphasizing 

“the limited burdens [contribution restrictions] impose on First Amendment 

freedoms,” id. at 136, as well as the weighty considerations of stare decisis that 

support “adhering to the analysis of contribution limits that the Court has 

consistently followed since Buckley was decided.” Id. at 137-38. Most recently, in 

Randall v. Sorrell, 548 U.S. 230 (2006), the Court again adhered to Buckley’s 

holding that contribution limits do not directly restrict contributors’ speech. See id.

at 246-48 (plurality opinion); see also id. at 284 (Souter, J., dissenting). 

B. The Lesser Protection Afforded to Contributions Is Not 

Limited to Contributions to Candidates and Parties. 

EMILY’s List attempts to sidestep the long line of precedents distinguishing 

contributions from expenditures, by suggesting that the Supreme Court has 

recognized a lesser degree of protection only for contributions “to candidates or 

parties.” 581 F.3d at 6, 7, 10 n.9. But nothing in Buckley or its progeny suggests 

that this is correct. 

Case: 09-5342 Document: 1220811 Filed: 12/15/2009 Page: 14
- 9 - 

Indeed, Buckley itself says quite explicitly that “a limitation upon the 

amount that any one person or group may contribute to a candidate or political 

committee entails only a marginal restriction upon the contributor’s ability to 

engage in free communication.” 424 U.S. at 20 (emphasis added).2

 And Buckley’s 

reasoning—that the communicative content of a contribution is limited to the 

“general expression of support” for the views of the recipient, that the “quantity of 

communication” in this “symbolic act” does not “increase perceptibly” based on 

the amount contributed, and that the contribution only facilitates “speech by 

someone other than the contributor,” id. at 20-21—is equally applicable to 

contributions to organizations other than parties and candidate committees. 

Similarly, Buckley’s description of the associational interests affected by 

contribution limits explicitly states that the Court’s analysis applies to 

contributions to political organizations, as well as to candidates and parties: 

[Making a contribution] enables like-minded persons to pool their 

resources in furtherance of common political goals. The Act’s 

contribution ceilings thus limit one important means of associating with a 

candidate or committee, but leave the contributor free to become a 

member of any political association and to assist personally in the 

association's efforts on behalf of candidates. And the Act’s contribution 

 

2

 A “political committee” is any group which makes $1,000 in expenditures or 

contributions and has a “major purpose” to influence federal elections. 2 U.S.C. § 

431(4); Buckley, 424 U.S. at 79. This definition goes well beyond candidate and 

party committees to include separate segregated funds of corporations and labor 

organizations, and a range of “unaffiliated” political committees that are not 

controlled by candidates or parties. 

Case: 09-5342 Document: 1220811 Filed: 12/15/2009 Page: 15
- 10 - 

limitations permit associations and candidates to aggregate large sums of 

money to promote effective advocacy. 

Id. at 22 (emphasis added).3

C. The Right to Spend Does Not Imply a Right to Raise Money 

Through Unlimited Individual Contributions. 

Similarly unfounded are EMILY’s List’s repeated attempts to perform an 

end-run around the contribution-expenditure distinction by asserting that the 

decisions which hold that political committees and other organizations have a right 

to spend unlimited amounts on political advocacy necessarily also imply that they 

therefore have a right to raise funds through unlimited contributions from 

individuals. Thus, the opinion in EMILY’s List repeatedly asserts that the Supreme 

Court has recognized that “nonprofit entities, like individual citizens, are 

constitutionally entitled to raise and spend unlimited money in support of 

candidates for elected office.” 581 F.3d at 9 (citing Cal. Med. Ass’n., 453 U.S. at 

202-03 (Blackmun, J., concurring in the judgment), MCFL, 479 U.S. at 259-65, 

 

3

 See also Cal. Med. Ass’n., 453 U.S. at 197 (“If the First Amendment rights 

of a contributor are not infringed by limitations on the amount he may contribute to 

a campaign organization which advocates the views and candidacy of a particular 

candidate, the rights of a contributor are similarly not impaired by limits on the 

amount he may give to a multicandidate political committee, such as CALPAC, 

which advocates the views and candidacies of a number of candidates.”) (plurality 

opinion). 

Case: 09-5342 Document: 1220811 Filed: 12/15/2009 Page: 16
- 11 - 

NCPAC, 470 U.S. at 501, Buckley, 424 U.S. at 47, and Citizens Against Rent 

Control v. City of Berkeley, 454 U.S. 290, 296-99 (1981)).4

It is certainly true that the Supreme Court has struck down limits on the 

amounts of independent expenditures that political committees may make. See

NCPAC, 470 U.S. at 501. And, though the Court has never addressed the point, 

logic would suggest that a law that attempted to impose an overall cap on the 

amount a political committee could raise in aggregate would be no more defensible 

than a law that capped spending at that level, because the effect would be exactly 

the same. But it does not follow, and the Court has never held, that the right to 

spend in unlimited amounts is equivalent to a right to raise money without any 

limitation on the individual contributions through which an organization obtains its 

funding. None of the cases cited in EMILY’s List has invalidated individual 

contribution limits for an organization that expends funds to support political 

candidates.5

 

4

 The assertion that the Supreme Court has held that individual citizens are 

entitled to “raise” money for political purposes free from any restrictions is 

particularly baffling, as none of the Supreme Court’s cases has considered 

regulation of the manner in which an individual citizen may “raise” money for 

political spending by that individual. 

5

 Although Citizens Against Rent Control, 454 U.S. at 294, struck down limits 

on contributions to ballot measure advocacy groups, that decision does not reflect a 

general principle that the right to spend carries with it a right to receive unlimited 

individual contributions. Rather, it reflects the complete absence of any arguable 

anti-corruption justification for such limits in the context of ballot measure 

Case: 09-5342 Document: 1220811 Filed: 12/15/2009 Page: 17
- 12 - 

Indeed, if it were the case that a right to make unlimited expenditures 

implied a right to raise funds free from limits on individual contributions, then 

limits on contributions to candidates and political parties would be equally 

vulnerable to attack, because the Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld the right of 

candidates and parties to make expenditures in unlimited amounts. See Buckley, 

424 U.S. at 51-58; see also Randall v. Sorrell, 548 U.S. at 242-46 (plurality 

opinion); Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Comm. v. FEC, 518 U.S. 604 

(1996) (Colorado I). But the Court has consistently held that a candidate or party’s 

right to spend unlimited amounts is not abridged by contribution limits as long as 

they do not limit the total amount the candidate or party may raise and do not 

unduly restrict them from raising funds necessary for effective campaigning. See 

McConnell, 540 U.S. at 135; Randall, 540 U.S. at 253 (plurality opinion). And, as 

the Supreme Court noted in McConnell, Buckley expressly indicated that the same 

principle applies to political committees: “[W]e have said that contribution limits 

impose serious burdens on free speech only if they are so low as to ‘preven[t] 

 

advocacy. The Court has long recognized that candidate elections present an 

entirely different context than ballot measure campaigns. See, e.g., First National 

Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, 435 U.S. 765, 790 (1978) (“The risk of corruption 

perceived in cases involving candidate elections simply is not present in a popular 

vote on a public issue.”) (internal citations omitted); see also id. at 788 n.26; 

Buckley v. Am. Constitutional Law Found., 525 U.S. 182, 203 (1999) (noting that 

“ballot initiatives do not involve the risk of ‘quid pro quo’ corruption present when 

money is paid to, or for, candidates”). 

Case: 09-5342 Document: 1220811 Filed: 12/15/2009 Page: 18
- 13 - 

candidates and political committees from amassing the resources necessary for 

effective advocacy.’” McConnell, 540 U.S. at 135 (quoting Buckley, 424 U.S. at 

21) (emphasis added). 

EMILY’s List’s reliance on California Medical Association to establish the 

supposed right to raise funds for independent expenditures from unlimited 

individual contributions is particularly unwarranted. The actual holding of the 

Court in California Medical Association was that the imposition of contribution 

limits on a political committee that made contributions to candidates was 

constitutional. See 453 U.S. at 201 (“[W]e conclude that the $5,000 limitation on 

the amount that persons may contribute to multicandidate political committees 

violates neither the First nor the Fifth Amendment.”) (majority opinion). Justice 

Blackmun, concurring in the judgment on the First Amendment point, stated that 

his own analysis “suggest[ed] that a different result would follow” if contribution 

limits “were applied to a political committee established for the purpose of making 

independent expenditures, rather than contributions to candidates.” Id. at 203 

(emphasis added). 

EMILY’s List, citing Marks v. United States, 430 U.S. 188, 193 (1977), 

suggests that Justice Blackmun’s statement on this point is “controlling” and 

“binding.” 581 F.3d at 9 & n.8. But the only respect in which Marks would make 

Justice Blackmun’s opinion controlling is in what it held on the question presented, 

Case: 09-5342 Document: 1220811 Filed: 12/15/2009 Page: 19
- 14 - 

which was that FECA’s contribution limits were constitutional as applied to a 

political committee that made candidate contributions, not in what Justice 

Blackmun said on an issue not before the Court, views which are no more than 

dicta. See EMILY’s List, 581 F.3d at 37 n.14 (Brown, J. concurring in judgment) 

(noting that under the Marks doctrine, the “controlling part of Justice Blackmun’s 

opinion is the holding that the FEC may constitutionally regulate contributions to 

fund independent political expenditures without contravening the First 

Amendment—no more and no less.”). 

Moreover, the entire premise of Justice Blackmun’s opinion regarding 

independent expenditures—that contributions are entitled to the same 

constitutional protection as expenditures—was subsequently, and repeatedly, 

rejected by majorities of the Court. See McConnell, 540 U.S. at 137-38 & n.40. It 

is simply incorrect to conclude that Justice Blackmun’s “suggest[ion]” about what 

his views would be if the case had involved a different issue is a binding holding of 

the Court.6

 

6 EMILY’s List’s further assertion that “subsequent decisions such as Citizens 

Against Rent Control” followed the principles of Justice Blackmun’s opinion, 581 

F.3d at 9 n.8, is equally wrong. Citizens Against Rent Control did not even cite 

Justice Blackmun’s opinion, and as Justice Marshall noted in his opinion 

concurring in the judgment, nothing in the majority opinion was contrary to the 

Court’s “consistent position” that contribution limits are “subject to less rigorous 

scrutiny than a direct restriction on expenditures.” 454 U.S. at 301 (Marshall, J., 

concurring in the judgment). 

Case: 09-5342 Document: 1220811 Filed: 12/15/2009 Page: 20
- 15 - 

Equally unfounded is EMILY’s List’s reliance on MCFL as support for the 

notion that political committees and other nonprofit groups have a right both to 

spend money without limitation on electoral advocacy and to raise money through 

unlimited individual contributions. In MCFL, the Court held that an ideological 

nonprofit corporation that raised money solely from individuals and whose primary 

purpose was not electoral activity had a right to spend its corporate treasury funds 

on express candidate advocacy. But the Court said nothing about the extent to 

which contributions to such groups could, or could not, be limited. That question 

was not before the Court, as there was no law imposing such limits on nonprofit 

corporations, and hence no constitutional challenge to such a law. Nonetheless, the 

Court noted that “should MCFL’s independent spending become so extensive that 

the organization’s major purpose may be regarded as campaign activity, the 

corporation would be classified as a political committee. 479 U.S. at 262 (citing 

Buckley, 424 U.S. at 79). As such, it would automatically be subject to the 

obligations and restrictions applicable to those groups whose primary objective is 

to influence political campaigns.” Id. Those restrictions, of course, include the 

contribution limits applicable to political committees, yet MCFL says nothing to 

suggest that the Court would be troubled by their application to a nonprofit entity, 

like SpeechNow.org, whose major purpose is electoral advocacy. MCFL is thus a 

particularly weak reed on which to rely for the notion that political committees 

Case: 09-5342 Document: 1220811 Filed: 12/15/2009 Page: 21
- 16 - 

cannot be subject to contribution limits when they raise funds for express candidate 

advocacy. 

D. Limits on the Amounts Individuals May Contribute to 

Political Committees to Support Campaign Expenditures 

Are Contribution Limits, Not Spending Limits. 

EMILY’s List compounds its consistent failure to respect the distinction 

drawn by the Supreme Court in Buckley and its progeny between the First 

Amendment interests affected by contribution and expenditure limits by, finally, 

seeking to deny that limits on the amounts individuals may contribute to political 

committees (or requirements that political committees use hard money for their 

expenditures) are contribution limits at all. See 581 F.3d at 15 n.14. According to 

the EMILY’s List panel, by “forc[ing] non-profit entities to pay for a large 

percentage of their varied political activities out of hard-money accounts subject to 

source and amount ($5000) limits rather than out of soft-money accounts that may 

receive unlimited donations,” such requirements “limit how much non-profits 

ultimately can spend” and “therefore ‘reduce[] the quantity of expression’” the 

organizations may engage in. Id. (quoting Buckley, 424 U.S. at 19). Thus, 

according to EMILY’s List, such requirements “are best considered spending 

restrictions.” Id. 

EMILY’s List’s assertion that a contribution limit must be analyzed as an 

expenditure limit is perhaps the most radical and erroneous proposition advanced 

Case: 09-5342 Document: 1220811 Filed: 12/15/2009 Page: 22
- 17 - 

in the opinion. The idea that limiting spenders to reliance on hard money must be 

considered a spending limit because it limits “how much [they] ultimately can 

spend” was directly rejected in Buckley, where the Court noted that the “overall 

effect” of a contribution limit “is merely to require candidates and political 

committees to raise funds from a greater number of persons....” 424 U.S. at 21-22. 

Further, this approach could not logically be limited to non-profit organizations; it 

would apply equally to candidates and parties, whose ability to spend in unlimited 

amounts is similarly constrained by their need to rely on hard-money donors. 

Thus, if EMILY’s List’s reasoning were correct, contribution limits for candidates 

and parties would be subject to the same strict scrutiny that, in Buckley, Randall, 

and Colorado I, invalidated limits on expenditures by candidates and parties. That 

result, of course, would be wholly at odds with the Supreme Court’s consistent 

application of a more relaxed scrutiny to uphold such contribution limits. 

More specifically, the reasoning of EMILY’s List on this point is directly at 

odds with the Supreme Court’s square holding in McConnell that the hard-money 

requirements of Title I of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA), Pub. L. 

No. 107-155, 116 Stat. 81 (2002), were subject to the less stringent standard of 

review applicable to contribution limits, as opposed to spending limits. Indeed, the 

Court in McConnell rejected exactly the argument accepted in EMILY’s List. 

BCRA’s challengers asserted that Title I’s provisions should be subject to the strict 

Case: 09-5342 Document: 1220811 Filed: 12/15/2009 Page: 23
- 18 - 

scrutiny applicable to spending limits because many of its restrictions took the 

form of prohibitions on the spending of soft money for particular purposes by 

political parties. McConnell, 540 U.S. at 138. The Court rejected the argument, 

reasoning that Title I’s requirements that limited parties to the use of hard money 

were, functionally, contribution limits, because they did not directly “limit[] the 

total amount of money parties can spend,” but only “the source and individual 

amount of donations.” Id. at 138-39. The same was true of the regulations at issue 

in EMILY’s List, as well as of the laws at issue here, which require political 

committees to rely on limited contributions for their political expenditures.7

* * * 

In sum, as the en banc Court considers the constitutionality of the 

contribution limits at issue here, it should set aside and, indeed, expressly 

disapprove, the analysis of the panel in EMILY’s List, which is grounded in a 

persistent refusal to recognize the fundamental differences between the First 

Amendment interests at issue in, and the degree of scrutiny applicable to, 

contribution and expenditure limitations. 

 

7 EMILY’s List’s reliance on FEC v. Wisconsin Right to Life, 551 U.S. 449 

(2007) (WRTL), for the proposition that such requirements are spending limits, not 

contribution limits, is also misplaced. The statute at issue in WRTL, as analyzed by 

the controlling opinion of the Court, was an outright prohibition on spending by 

the entity bringing the challenge, not a contribution limit. 

Case: 09-5342 Document: 1220811 Filed: 12/15/2009 Page: 24
- 19 - 

II. EMILY’s List Improperly Confines the Anti-Corruption Interest 

Supporting Contribution Limits to the Prevention of Quid Pro Quo 

Exchanges. 

EMILY’s List’s errors are not confined to its characterization of the 

regulations at issue, the degree to which they implicate First Amendment interests, 

and the applicable level of scrutiny. On the other side of the ledger—the analysis 

of the governmental interests justifying contribution limits—EMILY’s List rests on 

an error of equal magnitude: a mischaracterization of the Supreme Court’s 

holdings about the nature of the governmental interest that suffices to justify a limit 

on contributions. 

Specifically, although the EMILY’s List panel correctly acknowledged that 

“the [Supreme] Court has recognized a strong governmental interest in combating 

corruption and the appearance thereof,” 581 F.3d at 6, it immediately limited the 

scope of that interest by stating that “the anti-corruption rationale is not boundless” 

and that “[t]he core corruption that Government may permissibly target with 

campaign finance regulation ‘is the financial quid pro quo: dollars for political 

favors.’” Id. (quoting NCPAC, 470 U.S. at 497). 

It is of course true that the anti-corruption rationale—like all government 

interests justifying regulation in First Amendment areas—is not “boundless.” But 

in holding that the campaign finance laws “may permissibly target” only “core 

corruption” in the form of “the financial quid pro quo,” EMILY’s List again flies in 

Case: 09-5342 Document: 1220811 Filed: 12/15/2009 Page: 25
- 20 - 

the face of established Supreme Court precedent. Not only in McConnell but also 

in a string of decisions leading up to it, the Court has stated directly that it has “not 

limited” the interest in preventing corruption or its appearance “to the elimination 

of cash-for-votes arrangements.” McConnell, 540 U.S. at 143. As the Court said 

in Nixon v. Shrink Missouri Government PAC, 528 U.S. 377, 389 (2000), and 

repeated in McConnell: 

In speaking of ‘improper influence’ and ‘opportunities for abuse’ in 

addition to ‘quid pro quo arrangements,’ we recognized a concern not 

confined to bribery of public officials, but extending to the broader threat 

from politicians too compliant with the wishes of large contributors. 

540 U.S. at 143 (emphasis added). Further, the Court has recognized that the 

government’s compelling anti-corruption interest extends as well to measures 

which combat the “perception” of corruption caused by the role of money in 

candidate campaigns, because: 

Leave the perception of impropriety unanswered, and the cynical 

assumption that large donors call the tune could jeopardize the 

willingness of voters to take part in democratic governance. 

Shrink Missouri, 528 U.S. at 390; McConnell, 540 U.S. at 143-44. 

McConnell emphasized that a “crabbed view of corruption, and particularly 

of the appearance of corruption”—the same crabbed view expressed in EMILY’s 

List—“ignores precedent, common sense, and the realities of political fundraising 

exposed by the record in this litigation.” Id. at 152; see also id. at 152 n.48 (citing 

previous decisions taking the same broad view). The Court there said: 

Case: 09-5342 Document: 1220811 Filed: 12/15/2009 Page: 26
- 21 - 

[P]laintiffs conceive of corruption too narrowly. Our cases have 

firmly established that Congress' legitimate interest extends 

beyond preventing simple cash-for-votes corruption to curbing 

“undue influence on an officeholder's judgment, and the 

appearance of such influence.” Colorado II, supra, at 441, 121 

S.Ct. 2351. 

Many of the “deeply disturbing examples” of corruption cited by 

this Court in Buckley, 424 U.S., at 27, 96 S.Ct. 612, to justify 

FECA’s contribution limits were not episodes of vote buying, but 

evidence that various corporate interests had given substantial 

donations to gain access to high-level government officials. See 

Buckley, 519 F.2d, at 839-840, n. 36; nn. 5-6, supra. Even if that 

access did not secure actual influence, it certainly gave the 

“appearance of such influence.” Colorado II, supra, at 441, 121 

S.Ct. 2351; see also 519 F.2d, at 838. 

Id. at 150. The First Amendment, according to the Court, “does not render 

Congress powerless to address more subtle but equally dispiriting forms of 

corruption.” Id. at 153. 

III. Analyzed Correctly, and Without Reliance on EMILY’s List’s 

Erroneous Reasoning, Contribution Limits Applicable to Political 

Committees That Engage in Independent Expenditures Are 

Constitutional. 

Notwithstanding the erroneous analysis of EMILY’s List, a proper resolution 

of the constitutional questions at issue in this case must, as the discussion above 

demonstrates, involve a weighing of the marginal First Amendment interests of 

contributors to political committees against the substantial governmental interest in 

preventing the appearance of corruption of elected officeholders, an interest 

broadly understood to encompass “the danger that officeholders will decide issues 

Case: 09-5342 Document: 1220811 Filed: 12/15/2009 Page: 27
- 22 - 

not on the merits or the desires of their constituencies, but according to the wishes 

of those who have made large financial contributions valued by the officeholder.” 

McConnell, 540 U.S. at 153. 

So analyzed, FECA’s limits on contributions to political committees—even 

to those committees that promise to confine themselves to independent 

expenditures—are constitutional. As shown in our panel brief in SpeechNow.org’s 

appeal from the denial of preliminary injunctive relief, the close ties between 

parties, candidates, and nonprofit organizations that engage in political activities 

strongly support the judgment that officeholders will value large contributions to 

politically supportive nonprofit organizations enough to pose a danger of actual or 

apparent corruption. This conclusion is corroborated by the evidence of substantial 

diversion of large contributions from the major political parties to nonprofit 

organizations once BCRA outlawed the receipt of soft money by the parties.8

 The 

relationships among candidates, parties, and political committees, and the ways in 

which donors to political committees get preferential access to and influence over 

elected officials because of independent expenditures made by the committees, are 

further detailed in the FEC’s Proposed Findings of Fact and the supporting 

materials submitted to the district court in this case. See Dkt. No. 45, at 37-109. 

 

8

 See Brief Amici Curiae for Campaign Legal Center and Democracy 21 in 

Support of Defendant-Appellee and Urging Affirmance, No. 08-5223 (“CLCDemocracy 21 First Amici Br.”) at 19-30. 

Case: 09-5342 Document: 1220811 Filed: 12/15/2009 Page: 28
- 23 - 

Indeed, McConnell already held that concerns about the relationship of 

parties and candidates to “independent” nonprofit organizations and the resulting 

appearance of corruption were sufficient to permit regulation of fundraising by 

such organizations when the Supreme Court sustained BCRA’s prohibitions on 

party solicitation of funds for tax-exempt organizations. See 540 U.S. at 174-77. 

In so holding, the Court recognized that the diversion of soft-money contributions 

from parties to “like-minded tax-exempt organizations that conduct activities 

benefiting their candidates” would give rise to “[a]ll of the corruption and 

appearance of corruption” of fund-raising by the parties themselves. Id. at 175. 

Similar considerations support Congress’s judgment that contribution limits should 

be imposed on donations to support political expenditures by groups whose major 

purpose is engaging in election activity. 

In applying the appropriate level of scrutiny to those contributions limits, 

moreover, the Court should give no credence to SpeechNow.org’s argument that if 

individuals must be permitted to make independent expenditures in unlimited 

amounts, it follows that they similarly must be allowed to contribute unlimited 

amounts to organizations that will engage in such expenditures. That simplistic 

syllogism fails for two reasons. First, like the panel opinion in EMILY’s List, the 

argument erroneously equates the weighty First Amendment interest in engaging in 

speech directly with the much less substantial interest in making contributions to 

Case: 09-5342 Document: 1220811 Filed: 12/15/2009 Page: 29
- 24 - 

associate oneself with someone else’s speech. That the danger of apparent 

corruption posed by independent expenditures is insufficient to overcome the 

former does not mean that it does not outweigh the latter. Similarly, just because 

the interest in preventing actual or apparent corruption does not outweigh the 

political committee’s own weighty interest in making unlimited expenditures, see 

NCPAC, 470 U.S. at 497-98, does not mean that the anti-corruption interest does 

not outweigh the lesser interest of contributors in making unlimited contributions. 

Indeed, a major reason that the Court in NCPAC held that unlimited expenditures 

by political committees posed an insufficient threat of corruption to justify 

restricting those expenditures was that such committees “overwhelmingly” 

received their funding from “small contributions” of less than $1,000, id. at 497, 

which in the Court’s view obviated the likelihood that their activities would give 

particular contributors undue influence over candidates. 

Second, the syllogism argument – that if an individual has a right to make 

unlimited expenditures, he must therefore have a right to make unlimited 

contributions – ignores the likelihood that candidates will place a much greater 

value on large contributions made to what McConnell referred to as “like-minded” 

organizations, 540 U.S. at 175, which are likely to be much more reliable and 

consistent political allies and more effective and credible campaigners than 

individuals who may engage in independent expenditures on their own. As 

Case: 09-5342 Document: 1220811 Filed: 12/15/2009 Page: 30
- 25 - 

Buckley observed, such individuals are more likely to be viewed as loose cannons 

whose episodic participation in campaign activity “may well provide little 

assistance to the candidate’s campaign and indeed may prove counterproductive.” 

424 U.S. at 47. It would, therefore, be quite natural for candidates to place a much 

higher value on large contributions by individuals to “like-minded” organizations 

who engaged in sophisticated independent campaigning to benefit the candidates, 

than on direct expenditures made by the individuals themselves. The close ties 

between the national political parties and the supposedly independent section 527 

groups that made expenditures to influence the 2004 election, described at length 

in our first brief in this case, see CLC-Democracy 21 First Amici Br. at 21-27, well 

illustrate why expenditures by such “like-minded” organizations would be of 

greater benefit to parties and candidates than expenditures by individuals acting 

alone. 

That such large donations to independent expenditure groups may present a 

substantial appearance of corruption is no mere theory, but is strikingly illustrated 

by the facts underlying the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Caperton v. A.T. 

Massey Coal Co., 129 S. Ct. 2252 (2009). There, an individual whose company 

had interests in litigation pending before the West Virginia Supreme Court made 

extremely large donations to a political organization, “And for the Sake of the 

Kids,” which used the funds to make independent expenditures advocating the 

Case: 09-5342 Document: 1220811 Filed: 12/15/2009 Page: 31
- 26 - 

election of a judicial candidate who was believed to be likely to support the 

donor’s interest. That candidate went on to win the election and provide the 

decisive vote in favor of the donor’s company. Essentially treating the 

contributions made to the political group as the equivalent of direct donations to 

the campaign of the winning candidate, see, e.g., 129 S. Ct. at 2256 (stating that 

the justice casting the deciding vote “had received campaign contributions” from 

the donor), the Court held that the contributions created a “risk of actual bias” so 

“substantial” that due process required setting aside the court’s decision. Id. at 

2264-65. 

Such a substantial risk of bias is at least the equivalent of the appearance of 

corruption that the Court held in McConnell was sufficient to justify limitations on 

contributions—that is, “the danger that officeholders will decide issues not on the 

merits ..., but according to the wishes of those who have made large financial 

contributions valued by the officeholder.” See 540 U.S. at 153. That large 

contributions to independent spending groups pose precisely that danger is the 

fundamental teaching of Caperton. 

CONCLUSION 

For the foregoing reasons, this Court should answer the certified questions in 

favor of the constitutionality of the challenged provisions of FECA. 

 

Case: 09-5342 Document: 1220811 Filed: 12/15/2009 Page: 32
- 27 - 

 Respectfully submitted, 

/s/ Donald J. Simon 

Donald J. Simon 

SONOSKY, CHAMBERS, SACHSE, 

 ENDRESON & PERRY, LLP 

1425 K Street, NW, Suite 600 

Washington, DC 20005 

(202) 682-0240 

Counsel for Democracy 21 

J. Gerald Hebert 

Tara Malloy 

Paul S. Ryan 

THE CAMPAIGN LEGAL CENTER

215 E Street, NE 

Washington, DC 20002 

(202) 736-2200 

Counsel for the Campaign Legal 

Center 

Scott L. Nelson 

PUBLIC CITIZEN LITIGATION GROUP

1600 20th Street, NW 

Washington, DC 20009 

(202) 588-1000 

Counsel for Amici Curiae

Fred Wertheimer 

DEMOCRACY 21 

1875 I Street, NW, Suite 500 

Washington, DC 20005 

(202) 429-2008 

Counsel for Democracy 21 

December 15, 2009 

Case: 09-5342 Document: 1220811 Filed: 12/15/2009 Page: 33
- 28 - 

CERTIFICATE OF COMPLIANCE WITH FED. R. APP. P. 32(a)(7) 

AND CIR. R. 32(a)(2) 

 Pursuant to Fed. R. App. P. 29(c)(5) and Fed. R. App. P. 32 (a)(7)(C)(i), I 

certify that the foregoing amici brief complies with the length requirements of Fed. 

R. App. P. 29(d), Fed. R. App. P. 28.1(e)(2)(A)(i) and Cir. R. 32(a)(2). I have 

relied on the word count feature of Microsoft Word 2000 to calculate that the brief 

contains 6,244 words. I further certify that the foregoing brief complies with the 

typeface requirements of Fed. R. App. P. 32(a)(5) and Cir. R. 32(a) and the type 

style requirements of Fed. R. App. P. 32(a)(6). The brief has been prepared in a 

proportionately spaced typeface using Microsoft Word 2000 in Times New Roman 

font size 14. 

/s/ Donald J. Simon 

Donald J. Simon 

(D.C. Bar No. 256388) 

SONOSKY, CHAMBERS, SACHSE, 

 ENDRESON & PERRY, LLP 

1425 K Street, N.W., Suite 600 

Washington, D.C. 20005 

(202) 682-0240 

Dated: December 15, 2009 

Case: 09-5342 Document: 1220811 Filed: 12/15/2009 Page: 34
- 29 - 

CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE 

This is to certify that on December 15, 2009, I caused this BRIEF AMICI 

CURIAE FOR THE CAMPAIGN LEGAL CENTER AND DEMOCRACY 21 

SUPPORTING THE FEDERAL ELECTION COMMISSION to be filed 

electronically with the Clerk of the Court of the United States of Appeals for the 

District of Columbia using the CMS/ECF System. 

I further certify that on December 15, 2009, I filed with the Clerk’s office of 

the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, via hand 

delivery, twenty-five (25) copies of this BRIEF AMICI CURIAE pursuant to the 

Court’s Order in this case of November 5, 2009. 

I further certify that two (2) paper copies of the brief were sent on December 

15, 2009 by United States mail, first-class postage prepaid, to the following 

counsel: 

Attorneys Representing Appellants: 

Steven M. Simpson 

William H. Mellor 

Robert Gall 

Robert P. Frommer 

Paul M. Sherman 

INSTITUTE FOR JUSTICE

901 N. Glebe Road, Suite 900 

Arlington, VA 22203 

Stephen M. Hoersting 

Bradley A. Smith 

CENTER FOR COMPETITIVE POLITICS

124 W. Street South, Suite 201 

Alexandria, VA 22314 

Case: 09-5342 Document: 1220811 Filed: 12/15/2009 Page: 35
- 30 - 

Attorneys Representing Appellee:

David B. Kolker 

Robert W. Bonham, III 

Steve N. Hajjar 

Kevin Deeley 

FEDERAL ELECTION COMMISSION

999 East Street, N.W. 

Washington, D.C. 20463 

/s/ Donald J. Simon 

Donald J. Simon 

Case: 09-5342 Document: 1220811 Filed: 12/15/2009 Page: 36