Source: https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/conlaw/campaign-finance/
Timestamp: 2019-04-20 18:47:44+00:00

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The Ninth Circuit ruled in Thompson v. Hebdon that Alaska's person-to-candidate, person-to-non-political-party-group, and political-party-to-candidate contribution limits were valid. But at the same time the court struck the state's nonresident aggregate contribution limit as a violation of free speech.
The case tested four separate provisions of Alaska's campaign finance law.
The first provision limits individual contribution to candidates to $500. Based on trial court evidence, the Ninth Circuit held that the limit was "narrowly focused" to address actual and potential quid pro quo corruption in the state. As to the amount, the court noted that $500 was low, but not unreasonably so, and still allowed candidates plenty of opportunities to fund their campaigns. The court rejected the plaintiffs' argument that the cap should be measured in comparison to the prior limit, $1,000, and that the state should justify the drop.
The second provision limits individual contributions to non-party organizations to $500. The court upheld this limit as a measure designed to avoid circumvention of the individual contribution limit, above. "We conclude that Alaska has demonstrated the same interest here where the risk of circumvention of the individual-to-candidate limit is apparent: under Alaska law, any two individuals could form a 'group,' which could then funnel money to a candidate. Such groups could easily become pass-through entities for, say, a couple that wants to contribute more than the $500 individual-to-candidate limit."
The third provision limits political party contributions to candidates to $5,000. The court rejected the plaintiffs' argument that this amounts to discriminatory treatment (in comparison to labor-union PACs), but noted that its ruling doesn't foreclose a challenge to the dollar amount.
Alaska fails to show why an out-of-state individual's early contribution is not corrupting, whereas a later individual's contribution--i.e., a contribution made after the candidate has already amassed $3,000 in out-of-state funds--is corrupting. Nor does Alaska show that an out-of-state contribution of $500 is inherently more corrupting than a like in-state contribution--only the former of which is curbed under Alaska's nonresident limit. Alaska fails to demonstrate that the risk of quid pro quo corruption turns on a particular donor's geography. Accordingly, while we do not foreclose the possibility that a state could limit out-of-state contributions in furtherance of an anti-corruption interest, Alaska's aggregate limit on what a candidate may receive is a poor fit.
Chief Judge Thomas concurred on the first three provisions, but dissented on this last one. Judge Thomas argued that the limit furthered the state's interests in actual quid pro quo corruption and its appearance and its interest in preserving "self-governance."
The Supreme Court yesterday declined to stay a lower court ruling that struck an FEC reg that created a disclosure loophole for 501(c)(4) organizations.
We posted on the district court ruling, CREW v. FEC, here.
The reg allowed 501(c)(4)s and cooperating super-PACs to avoid statutory disclosure requirements. The district court ruled that the reg was at odds with statutory disclosure requirements.
Chief Justice Roberts last week issued an order (without opinion) staying the district court ruling, but yesterday the full Court vacated the Chief's order and denied the stay (also without an opinion).
Under the (now not stayed) district court ruling, the FEC has 45 days to come up with new regs that comply with the statute.
In its Report entitled The Civil Rights Record of Judge Brett Kavanaugh, the Legal Defense and Education Fund, Inc. of the NAACP supports its opposition to the confirmation of Judge Kavanaugh to the United States Supreme Court.
even before considering the opinions he has authored, the speeches he has given, and his full legal record, the following is true: Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination is tainted by the influence of reactionary groups in his selection by the President and by the President’s assertion that his nominees will target and overturn settled Supreme Court precedent. A woefully inadequate document production is thwarting the Senate’s “advice and consent” function and the ability of the American public to determine whether they want their Senators to support this nominee. And perhaps most significantly, the President’s credibility has been sapped by the ongoing investigations that raise questions about the legitimacy of his occupancy of the Oval Office and the vast powers it confers, such as the nomination of Supreme Court Justices. This highly unusual and critical context powerfully bears on our assessment of Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination.
Judge Kavanaugh’s campaign finance record provides four overarching themes. First, Judge Kavanaugh appears hostile to campaign finance regulations, seeming to be unwilling to uphold regulations beyond a narrow anti-corruption rationale. Second, Judge Kavanaugh’s BCRA interpretation [in Bluman v. Federal Election Committee] about the scope of issue-advocacy expenditures would allow foreign actors to engage in thinly veiled “issue advocacy” that deepens racial and religious division leading up to elections. Such a narrow interpretation of the BCRA prevents it from barring foreign actors who influence U.S. elections in concrete ways and increases the likelihood of the use of these racial appeals during the next federal election, an important tool of suppressing the votes of communities of color. Third, as evident in Emily’s List [v. Federal Election Commission], Judge Kavanaugh appears willing to reach out unnecessarily to decide issues in this context. Fourth, Judge Kavanaugh would likely revisit the soft-money limits on contributions to political parties as justice.
At several points, the Report suggests questions and specific focus for the Senate questioning. The hearings begin today.
Chief Judge Beryl A. Howell (D.D.C.) ruled on Friday in CREW v. FEC that an FEC regulatory loophole that allows 501(c)(4) organizations and cooperating super-PACs to avoid statutory disclosure requirements was invalid. The ruling strikes the FEC regulation, invalidates the FEC's dismissal of CREW's administrative complaint against Crossroads GPS, and means that the FEC has to reconsider the complaint for failure to disclose contributors. Judge Howell stayed the ruling to give the FEC time to issue valid interim regulations.
The ball's now in the FEC's court. Depending on what the FEC does, this ruling could strike a serious blow to 501(c)(4)s and cooperating super-PACs that use the regulatory loophole to fly under the radar and evade disclosure of contributors.
The case tests the FEC disclosure reg at 11 C.F.R. Sec. 109.10(e)(1)(vi) against the authorizing federal law at 52 U.S.C. Secs. 30104(c)(1) and (c)(2)(C). The reg requires a non-political committee (like a 501(c)(4) organization) to report "[t]he identification of each person who made a contribution in excess of $200 to the person filing such report, which contribution was made for the purpose of furthering the reported independent expenditure." The statute requires a non-political committee "who makes independent expenditures in an aggregate amount or value in excess of $250 during a calendar year" to report "the identification of each person who made a contribution in excess of $200 to the person filing such statement which was made for the purpose of furthering an independent expenditure."
First, the challenged regulation wholly fails to implement another disclosure requirement, mandated in 52 U.S.C. Sec. 30104(c)(1), requiring reporting not-political committees to identify non-trivial donors, as well as the date and amounts of their contributions, when the contributions were made for political purposes to influence any election for federal office, or at the request or authorization of a candidate or the candidate's agent. Such contributions may, in fact, be intended to fund the not-political committee's own contributions and be routed to candidates, political parties, or political committees, such as super PACs. Second, the challenged regulation impermissibly narrows the mandated disclosure in 52 U.S.C. Sec. 30104(c)(2)(C), which requires the identification of such donors contributing for the purpose of furthering the not-political committee's own express advocacy for or against the election of a federal candidate, even when the donor has not expressly directed that the funds be used in the precise manner reported.
Reading subsection (c)(1) out of the statute makes a difference. By contrast to the donors covered in subsection (c)(2)(C), who contributed to support the not-political committee's independent expenditures . . . the donors covered in subsection (c)(1) contributed to not-political committees to support political efforts in connection with federal elections, which contributions may be used by the not-political committee, in some cases, to contribute directly to candidates or political committees, including to fund super PACs. For example, super PACs set up only to make independent expenditures, may receive unlimited contributions from donors, including not-political committees, to fund their independent expenditure activity. While super PACs, as political committees, must disclose their contributors, those disclosed contributors may serve merely as pass-through entities to route the funds to the super PAC.
Indeed, super PACs are often affiliated with not-political committees, such as 501(c)(4) organizations, because, as a political committee and not-political committee, respectively, each entity "abides by a particular set of rules, enjoys distinct opportunities, and is subject to different restraints." Allowing not-political committees to mask donors, who otherwise are subject to disclosure under subsection (c)(1), facilitates the role of these organizations as pass-throughs, enabling donors to contribute to super PACs without being identified by routing their contributions through affiliated 501(c)(4) organizations or other types of not-political committees. Absent enforcement of subjection (c)(1), super PACs disclose the identities of contributing not-political committees, but the latter do not disclose the original contributors, subverting the FECA's broad disclosure regime.
The ruling strikes the FEC reg, but gives the Commission another bite at the apple--45 days to issue interim regs that comply with the statute.
The Ninth Circuit yesterday upheld Montana's political committee reporting and disclosure requirements against First Amendment challenges by a group whose major purpose was not political advocacy. The ruling keeps these requirements on the books.
The case arose when the group Montanans for Community Development refrained from sending a pro-job-growth mailer that mentioned certain candidates in upcoming state elections, because it would have to comply with state political committee reporting and disclosure requirements. MCD sued, arguing that the requirements were unconstitutionally vague, that they were overbroad, and that they were unconstitutional as applied to MCD (as a group whose major purpose wasn't political advocacy).
The court, in a brief and unpublished opinion, rejected these claims. The court said that Montana law put a "person of ordinary intelligence [on] fair notice of what is prohibited" (and thus wasn't vague); that the requirements were substantially related to sufficiently important government interests of informing the electorate, deterring actual corruption and avoiding the appearance of corruption, and gathering data to enforce more substantive electioneering restrictions (and thus wasn't overbroad); and that "[p]olitical committee reporting and disclosure laws can extend beyond groups whose major purpose is political advocacy" (and thus survived MCD's as-applied challenge).
The Ninth Circuit this week denied rehearing en banc of a panel ruling upholding Montana's contribution limits against a First Amendment challenge. Through a forceful dissent and response-to-the-dissent, judges on the court wrangled over the right standard for contribution limits in the wake of Citizens United and McCutcheon v. FEC.
The long-running, up-and-down case, now Lair v. Motl, tests Montana's low contribution limits, designed to address the state's unique history with political corruption. A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit upheld the limits, and the full court voted to deny en banc review.
In dissent, Judge Ikuta, joined by Judges Callahan, Bea, M. Smith, and N.R. Smith, argued that the panel applied too lenient a standard. In particular, Judge Ikuta wrote that under McCutcheon and Citizens United, "the only state interest that justifies contribution limits is the prevention of acts that 'would be covered by bribery laws if a quid pro quo arrangement were proved.'"
In light of the Supreme Court's clarification, a state can justify imposing regulations limiting individuals' political speech (via limiting political contributions) only by producing evidence that it has a real problem in combating actual or apparent quid pro quo corruption. . . . [T]he government must provide evidence that 'the harms it recites are real and that its restriction will in fact alleviate them to a material degree.'" To meet this test here, a state must show that it has a realistic need to prevent acts that 'would be covered by bribery laws" by (for instance) presenting evidence that large monetary contributions were made "to control the exercise of an officeholder's official duties" or "point[ing] to record evidence or legislative findings suggesting any special corruption problem." One thing is certain: the state cannot carry its burden with evidence showing only that large contributions increase donors' influence or access.
Judges Fisher and Murguia responded, arguing that the dissent's test "has never been adopted by the Supreme Court or this court." "The evidentiary standard established by the Supreme Court requires that a state need only demonstrate a risk of quid pro quo corruption or its appearance that is neither conjectural nor illusory."
Judge Amy Berman Jackson (D.D.C.) ruled on Friday that donors to a PAC don't have a First Amendment right against public disclosure of their identities as part of the FEC investigation file into their political contributions.
The ruling means that the FEC investigation file, including the contributors' identities, will be released, unless and until the ruling is appealed.
The case, John Doe 1 & John Doe 2 v. FEC, arose when the FEC launched an investigation into a series of transactions that landed Now or Never PAC with a $1.7 million contribution. The FEC's OGC learned that John Doe 2 sent about $1.7 million to Government Integrity; that Government Integrity wired about that amount to American Conservative Union; and that American Conservative Union, in turn, sent that amount on to Now or Never PAC.
The FEC's OGC recommended that the Commission find reason to believe that John Does 1 and 2 violated FECA's prohibition on "mak[ing] a contribution in the name of another person or knowingly permit[ting] his name to be used to effect such a contribution." The FEC rejected the recommendation, however, and sent the case to conciliation. Based on the results of conciliation, the FEC found that there was reason to believe that the plaintiffs, the PACs, and the treasurer of Now or Never violated FECA's prohibitions on making or receiving contributions in another person's name.
The FEC also advised that it would put the documents related to the case on the public record.
The John Does sued, arguing that this violated their First Amendment rights, among other things.
Judge Jackson disagreed. She noted initially that "plaintiffs do not make any claim that anyone's associational rights are being infringed, and disclosing the identities of plaintiffs here would not involve the disclosure of anyone's internal operations or political strategies." She also noted that the FEC recently revised its disclosure policy and tailored it "to minimize the burdens on constitutional rights while providing for sufficient disclosure to advancing legitimate concerns of deterring future violations and promoting Commission accountability."
Judge Jackson went on to hold that the FEC's disclosure policy is reasonable (under the APA) and consistent with FOIA.
Today brings the news that the President is contemplating litigation to halt the publication of Fire and Fury:Inside the Trump White House by Michael Wolff. This followed a reported cease and desist letter to former White House "chief strategist" and insider Steve Bannon for talking with Wolff in alleged violation of a nondisclosure agreement.
But behind the obvious relevance of New York Times v. Sullivan (1964) which set the doctrine of actual malice for defamation under the First Amendment, lurks another case involving the New York Times: New York Times v. United States (1971), often called the "Pentagon Papers Case."
It is the Pentagon Papers Case that solidified the disfavor for prior restraint.
The brief per curiam opinion in the 6-3 decision stated that there is "a heavy presumption against its constitutional validity," and the government "thus carries a heavy burden of showing justification for the imposition of such a restraint." While it is certainly the United States government that is a party to the Pentagon Papers Case, most commentators and scholars believe that it was President Nixon who was at the forefront of the attempt to stop publication of the papers. Arguably, the Pentagon Papers involved "state secrets," but President Trump, like Nixon, has been criticized as conflating his own interests with that of the government.
It's thus a good time to reconsider the continuing relevance of the case and its litigation. One perspective is available in the movie The Post involving the Pentagon Papers and starring Meryl Streep as Katharine Graham, the publisher of The Washington Post.
Another good perspective is a recent conversation between James C. Goodale, author of Fighting for the Press: the Inside Story of the Pentagon Papers and Other Battles and Jeremy Scahill, one of the founders of The Intercept and author of Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield, which I moderated at CUNY School of Law.
In its opinion in French v. Jones, a unanimous Ninth Circuit panel rejected a First Amendment challenge to a Montana judicial ethics rule restricting political endorsements in campaigns.
Montana Code of Judicial Conduct 4.1(A)(7) prohibits judicial candidates from seeking, accepting, or using endorsements from a political party/organization or partisan candidate, although it does allow political parties to endorse and even provide funds to judicial candidates. Affirming the district judge and upholding the provision's constitutionality, the Ninth Circuit opinion by Judge Jay Bybee surveys the United States Supreme Court's two opinions on the First Amendment and judicial campaign ethics - - - Republican Party of Minnesota v. White (2002) and Williams-Yulee v. Florida Bar (2015) - - - and notes that although the Supreme Court has provided "mixed guidance," the "clear shift in favor of state regulation" and "palpable change" in Williams-Yulee renders the arguments of the challengers unavailing.
After a rehearsal of the cases, including a Ninth Circuit en banc decision, Judge Bybee applied strict scrutiny. Montana's compelling governmental interest of "actual and perceived judicial impartiality" had been accepted in Williams-Yulee. The second interest in a "structurally independent judiciary" is also evaluated, with a supporting citation to The Federalist No. 78, and implicitly found to be even "more compelling." The major challenge, however, was that the judicial canon was not narrowly tailored because it was "fatally underinclusive." On this issue, Judge Bybee's opinion again relied on the change wrought by Williams-Yulee, quoting language disapproving on underinclusiveness. More specifically, the court found that the interest in judicial independence was differently served by endorsements from political parties (whose use was prohibited by the canon) than by endorsements by interest groups. Likewise, the court found that permitting judicial candidates to solicit and use money from political parties was unpersuasive because endorsements are more public, although the information regarding contributions is also available to the public.
Additionally, the court rejected the equation between the announcement prohibition in White, which was found unconstitutional, and the political party endorsement prohibition at issue. Party endorsement is not simply "shorthand" for views. "An endorsement is a thing of value: it may attract voters' attention, jumpstart a campaign, give assurance that the candidate has been vetted, or provide legitimacy to an unknown candidate . . ."
The court also rejected the argument that Montana did not show political endorsements cause harm noting that such an argument could lead to a finding that Montana's choice of nonpartisan judicial elections was itself unconstitutional. Moreover, the elimination of judicial elections entirely is not a less restrictive means consistent with Williams-Yulee.
Although Williams-Yulee was a closely divided case and its reasoning not entirely clear, it provides the basis on which courts are upholding judicial campaigning restrictions.
The en banc D.C. Circuit unanimously ruled this week that FECA's per-election base limits on campaign contributions don't violate free speech.
The ruling could give the Supreme Court a chance to reevaluate its stance on the constitutionality of base contributions, or at least per-election base contributions, in light of its most recent ruling on contributions, McCutcheon v. FEC. The Court in that case held that aggregate limits on base contributions violate free speech, even if base contributions themselves don't.
The plaintiffs in Holmes v. FEC challenged FECA's $2,600 base limit per candidate per election. The law means that a person can contribute up to $2,600 to a candidate in a primary, another $2,600 to that candidate in the general, and yet another $2,600 to that candidate in any runoff. In the usual course of things (without a runoff) this allows a person to contribute up to $5,200 to a candidate for the whole cycle.
The plaintiffs claimed that per-election restriction violated free speech, although they didn't take on all base limits. In other words, they wanted to contribute $0 to their favored candidates in the primaries, but $5,200 in the generals. The per-election restriction prevented them from doing that, and they claimed that this violated the First Amendment.
To impose a meaningful contribution ceiling, then, Congress has no choice but to specify some time period in which donors can contribute the maximum amount. There are a host of alternatives in that regard.
Just as Buckley did not require Congress to explain its choice of $1,000 rather than $2,000 as itself closely drawn to preventing corruption, we see no basis for requiring Congress to justify its choice concerning the other essential element of a contribution limit--its timeframe--as itself serving that interest.
Julie Silverbrook of The Constitutional Sources Project has a worthwhile "brief history" of the Emoluments Clause, including the text and this excerpt from The Federalist No. 22: "Evils of this description ought not to be regarded as imaginary. One of the weak sides of republics, among their numerous advantages, is that they afford too easy an inlet to foreign corruption." The passage goes on to contrast monarchies with republican governments, the former being less susceptible to corruption because the hereditary monarch "has so great a personal interest in the government, and in the external glory of the nation, that it is not easy for a foreign power to give him an equivalent for what he would sacrifice by treachery to the State."
While it has been argued that the Emoluments Clause should not apply to the President as we noted here, its application to a President-Elect is even more uncertain.
Law professors looking for a class exercise (or perhaps a paper topic) could use any number of examples, although a "hypothetical" based on an Argentina construction project might be useful. Here is the situation courtesy of a storify of tweets and here is the piece from The Hill.
Profs. Joanna Shepherd and Michael S. Kang (both of Emory), in cooperation with the American Constitution Society, recently published a comprehensive empirical study of state-court decisions in election cases. The result: State court judges are politically biased in these cases and thus favor their own party's interests in election disputes.
The study provides yet one more reason not to elect judges, especially in partisan elections.
The study, Partisan Justice: How Campaign Money Politicizes Judicial Decisionmaking in Election Cases, forthcoming in the Stanford Law Review, is based on data from over 500 election cases from all 50 states from 2005 to 2014, including over 2,500 votes from more than 400 judges in state supreme courts.
Analyzing a new dataset of cases from 2005 to 2014, this study finds that judicial decisions are systematically biased by these types of campaign finance and re-election influences to help their party's candidates win office and favor their party's interests in election disputes.
The study finds that judicial partisanship is significantly responsive to political considerations that have grown more important in today's judicial politics. Judicial partisanship in election cases increases, and elected judges become more likely to favor their own party, as party campaign-finance contributions increase.
But "[t]his influence of campaign money largely disappears for lame-duck judges without re-election to worry about."
The Eleventh Circuit this week rejected a First Amendment challenge to Alabama's ban on PAC-to-PAC political contributions. The ruling upholds Alabama's ban and deepens a split in the circuits.
The Alabama Democratic Conference, an Alabama PAC perhaps best known for its yellow sample ballot that it distributes to voters, brought the case, arguing that Alabama's law that bans political contributions between PACs violates free speech. The ADC gets money from individual contributors, other PACs, and even candidates; it spends money in support of particular candidates and independent advocacy. The ADC uses separate bank accounts for candidate contributions and its own independent expenditures. Still, the state's PAC-to-PAC transfer ban prohibited the ADC from receiving money from other PACs. So it sued.
The Eleventh Circuit upheld the state's transfer ban. The court ruled that the state enacted the ban in response to a concern by state voters that PAC-to-PAC transfers were being used to conceal the true identity of political contributors--and raised the appearance of quid pro quo corruption. Moreover, the court said that the ADC didn't do enough to segregate its two accounts to reduce the appearance that it might use other PACs' contributions for candidate contributions. Because the ban was closely drawn to address the appearance of corruption, the Eleventh Circuit upheld it.
The ruling aligns with the Second and Fifth Circuits, but against the Tenth, on the question whether a PAC-to-PAC transfer ban violates free speech, when a PAC has two separate accounts, one for candidate contributions and the other for independent expenditures.
Judge Christopher R. Cooper (D.D.C.) ruled earlier this week that the controlling members of the FEC applied the wrong legal analysis in concluding that two groups were not "political committees" under federal campaign finance law. The ruling reverses and remands to the FEC for reconsideration.
The case matters because designation as a "political committee" triggers more stringent reporting requirements under campaign finance law. Judge Cooper's ruling makes it more likely that a group would be considered a "political committee," and thus marks a victory for campaign disclosure advocates.
The case arose when CREW lodged a complaint with the FEC that two groups, American Action Network and Americans for Job Security, were unregistered "political committees." Those groups spent money on TV ads and other electioneering communication in three congressional districts in the 2010 elections. In response to CREW's complaint, three FEC commissioners determined that the groups' "major purpose" wasn't "the nomination or election of a candidate," and therefore that they were not "political committees" under campaign finance law. The commissioners reasoned that the groups' electioneering communications--ads that mentioned a candidate, but that did not advocate for or against a candidate's election--shouldn't be considered in determining the "major purpose," and that groups' purposes over their entire history should be considered in determining their "major purpose."
CREW's citations to legislative history, past FEC precedent, and court precedent certainly support the conclusion that many or even most electioneering communications indicate a campaign-related purpose. Indeed, it blinks reality to conclude that many of the ads considered by the Commissioners in this case were not designed to influence the election or defeat of a particular candidate in an ongoing race. . . . Instead, the Court will limit itself to identifying the legal error in the Commissioners' statements--that is, the erroneous understanding that the First Amendment effectively required the agency to exclude from its consideration all non-express advocacy in the context of disclosure.
The Commissioners' refusal to give any weight whatsoever to an organizations' relative spending in the most recent calendar year--particularly in the case of a fifteen-year-old organization like AJS--indicates an arbitrary "fail[ure] to consider an important aspect of the [relevant] problem."
Judge Cooper sent the case back to the FEC and ordered it "to conform with [this] declaration within 30 days." The FEC can, of course, appeal.
to be held on February 16th and 17th, 2017.
Deadline for submissions of article proposals is Oct. 7, 2016.
Elections leave open the possibility for the corrupting influence of dark money. “Dark money” controversy figured prominently in the last Arkansas judicial elections, so much so that the Arkansas Supreme Court and General Assembly have studied the issue of campaign financing, and the Arkansas Bar Association created the Task Force on Maintaining a Fair and Impartial Judiciary, which issued a report in June recommending appointment of judges and other reforms. Judicial appointment, however, is not without its critics, who contend among other arguments that appointment is undemocratic, and that appointed judges lack authority and legitimacy and are less accountable.
The broad goal of this symposium is to debate the strengths and weaknesses of judicial election systems versus judicial appointment systems, with an eye toward the best solution for Arkansas. Topics of interest include, for example, whether an appointment process would be appropriate for all appellate judges or only Supreme Court Justices; the most effective and bipartisan types of appointment processes; issues surrounding recusal from cases involving contributors; and reforms to protect the election process from the influence of “dark money.” We anticipate panels comprising a mix of academics, judges, and legislators, both Arkansans and out-of-state speakers and contributors.
More submission details at the law review website here.
In its opinion in Winter v. Wolnitzek authored by Judge Jeffrey Sutton for the unanimous Sixth Circuit panel, the court considered eight provisions of the Kentucky Code of Judicial Conduct against facial and as-applied First Amendment challenges after first concluding that there was a sufficient case or controversy under Article III.
The court applies strict scrutiny to the State's efforts to regulate the campaign speech of judicial candidates under the United States Supreme Court's decision last year in Williams-Yulee v. The Florida Bar. In Williams-Yulee, the no direct solicitation of contributions prohibition survived and a few of the provisions in Winter likewise survive. The Kentucky Supreme Court, pursuant to a certification proceeding, rendered its interpretation on three of the canons.
The speeches clause, which prohibited judicial candidates from making speeches for or against a political party, was unconstitutional as not narrowly tailored. The court noted that this does not prohibit a tweet for or against a political party, and distinguished a prohibition of judicial candidates from making speeches on behalf of a political organization (as the Ninth Circuit upheld).
The contributions clause, which prohibits judicial candidates from making financial contributions to a political organization or candidate was upheld. Not withstanding the court's recognition that "money is speech" under Buckley v. Valeo. The court held that this clause "narrowly serves the Commonwealth’s compelling interest in preventing the appearance that judicial candidates are no different from other elected officials when it comes to quid pro quo politics." On this, the Sixth Circuit reversed the district judge.
The endorsements clause, which prohibits judicial candidates from publicly endorsing or opposing candidates for public office was likewise constitutional. Again, the court stressed the quid pro quo nature of endorsements.
The "acting as a leader" clause, which prohibits a judge from acting as a leader or holding any office in a political organization was constitutional on its face as well as-applied to the request to host a political event that is a fundraiser. The fundraiser, the court reasoned, brings the judge's impartiality into question.
The false statements clause, prohibiting judicial candidates from making false statements with knowledge or reckless disregard of the truth is perhaps the most interesting result. The court distinguishes another Sixth Circuit case - - - Susan B. Anthony List v. Driehaus - - - which was not only not limited to material statements (as it was by the Kentucky Supreme Court's certification opinion), but also makes the Williams-Yulee distinction between political and judicial candidates. However, the court found that as-applied to a judicial candidate's statement to be "re-elected" when in fact she occupied the judicial position because of appointment rather than election, the provision was unconstitutional. The ban there "outstrips" the government interest and did not provide sufficient "breathing space."
The commits clause, prohibiting judicial candidates from making pledges or promises, was remanded. This was not a provision that was certified to the Kentucky state supreme court and the Sixth Circuit panel implied that it should be. The problem is determining whether an "issue-based" commitment is inconsistent with the impartial performance of judicial duties, with the Sixth Circuit panel stating that if "Kentucky interprets “impartiality” to mean solely “impartiality as to parties,” the clause may well advance a compelling interest and do so narrowly."
The court ends its opinion, as it began, by acknowledging the "cross-currents" of First Amendment challenges to judicial, rather than political, campaigns. The court navigated surely and perhaps overly-speedily through the multiple issues landing with mixed results. It does seem that the court will be visiting this terrain again.

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