Opinion ID: 150474
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Legal Standard for Plaintiffs' Claim of Unconstitutional Discrimination

Text: In determining the legal standard to apply to Count One, we hew to the Supreme Court's analysis in Buckley v. Valeo , which is the principal binding precedent addressing whether a system of public financing for elections unconstitutionally discriminates against minor-party candidates. Buckley considered, in part, a 1970 federal statute that created a system of public financing for presidential election campaigns. See Buckley, 424 U.S. at 85, 96 S.Ct. 612. Several individuals and entities, including minor parties and prospective candidates, see id. at 7-8, 96 S.Ct. 612, challenged the law. They claimed, among other things, that it violated the First Amendment and the equal protection component of the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment [3] by discriminating against minor-party candidates. See id. at 93, 96 S.Ct. 612. As we set forth in greater detail below, the CEP differs in some ways from the presidential-candidate financing system at issue in Buckley, and our analysis must account for those differences. We are, nonetheless, compelled to apply the legal standard articulated in Buckley, as that case addressed exactly the type of claim raised in Count One: a challenge to a public financing system on the ground that it unconstitutionally discriminates against minor-party candidates. We acknowledge that another Supreme Court decision, issued after Buckley, ruled on a similar challenge to a public financing system. See Bang v. Chase, 442 F.Supp. 758 (D.Minn.1977), summarily aff'd sub nom., 436 U.S. 941, 98 S.Ct. 2840, 56 L.Ed.2d 782 (1978). That ruling, however, was a summary affirmance of a district court judgment and therefore provides little guidance. As the Supreme Court clarified a year before issuing its summary affirmance in Bang, an unexplicated summary affirmance settles the issues for the parties, and is not to be read as a renunciation by th[e] Court of doctrines previously announced in [its] opinions after full argument. Mandel v. Bradley, 432 U.S. 173, 176, 97 S.Ct. 2238, 53 L.Ed.2d 199 (1977) (quotation marks omitted). We therefore heed the Court's warning that `[ascertaining the reach and content of summary actions may itself present issues of real substance,' id. (quoting Hicks v. Miranda, 422 U.S. 332, 345 n. 14, 95 S.Ct. 2281, 45 L.Ed.2d 223 (1975)), and we do not attempt to divine whether the Supreme Court adopted the district court's reasoning in Bang or whether the Court affirmed on an entirely different rationale. See, e.g., Bush v. Vera, 517 U.S. 952, 996, 116 S.Ct. 1941, 135 L.Ed.2d 248 (1996) (Kennedy, J., concurring) (We do not endorse the reasoning of the district court when we order summary affirmance of the judgment. (emphasis added)); Mandel, 432 U.S. at 176, 97 S.Ct. 2238 (Because a summary affirmance is an affirmance of the judgment only, the rationale of the affirmance may not be gleaned solely from the opinion below. (emphasis added)); see also Morse v. Republican Party, 517 U.S. 186, n. 21, 116 S.Ct. 1186, 134 L.Ed.2d 347 (1996) (We... note that a summary affirmance by this Court is a `rather slender reed' on which to rest future decisions. (quoting Anderson v. Celebrezze, 460 U.S. 780, 784-85 n. 5, 103 S.Ct. 1564, 75 L.Ed.2d 547 (1983))). [4] We also decline plaintiffs' invitation to look for guidance from Davis v. Federal Election Commission, ___ U.S. ___, 128 S.Ct. 2759, 171 L.Ed.2d 737 (2008), in deciding plaintiffs' discrimination claim in Count One. [5] Davis involved an entirely different claim: the Davis plaintiffs challenged the so-called Millionaire's Amendment, which imposed a penaltyin the form of a disadvantageous asymmetrical regulatory schemeon candidates for Congress who spent large amounts of their own money on their campaigns. Id. at 2766, 2771. Davis accordingly addressed a law that burdened the fundamental First Amendment right to spend one's own money on one's own campaign. See id. at 2771 ([W]e agree with Davis that this scheme impermissibly burdens his First Amendment right to spend his own money for campaign speech.); see also id. (recognizing the fundamental nature of the right to spend personal funds for campaign speech). Putting aside the CEP's trigger provisions, which we address below in connection with Counts Two and Three, the CEP does not impose a penalty on a candidate who spends his or her own money on a campaign, for in every race candidates can decline to participate in the CEP. [6] See id. at 2772 ([T]he choice involved in Buckley was quite different from the choice imposed by [the Millionaire's Amendment]. In Buckley, a candidate, by forgoing public financing, could retain the unfettered right to make unlimited personal expenditures.... The choice imposed by [the Millionaire's Amendment] is not remotely parallel to that in Buckley. ). Davis, therefore, is inapposite. In any event, Davis in no way suggested that it was overruling Buckley. Yet if Davis's analysis were applied here, it could not be reconciled with Buckley. As we discuss in greater detail below, Buckley placed the burden on the plaintiffs to show[ ] that the election funding plan disadvantage[d] nonmajor parties by operating to reduce their strength below that attained without any public financing. 424 U.S. at 98-99, 96 S.Ct. 612 (emphasis added). Davis, on the other hand, put the burden on the government to defend the statute in question. See 128 S.Ct. at 2772-74. Buckley, moreover, required that the presidential-campaign financing system be justified by a sufficiently important state interest, 424 U.S. at 95-96, 96 S.Ct. 612; see note 7, post; whereas Davis applied a more searching standard and required that the Millionaire's Amendment be justified by a compelling state interest, 128 S.Ct. at 2772 (quotation marks omitted). Because Buckley, not Davis, addressed the same type of claim as the one raised here, and because there is no indication that Davis was meant to overrule Buckley 's analysis of the presidential-campaign financing system (even sub silentio ), we look to Buckley for the legal standard by which to assess plaintiffs' claim of unconstitutional discrimination in Count One. We therefore closely examine the legal standards applied in Buckley, and we describe how the District Court didand did notapply those standards correctly.
Buckley first determined that the public financing system was a congressional effort, not to abridge, restrict, or censor speech, but rather to use public money to facilitate and enlarge public discussion and participation in the electoral process, goals vital to a self-governing people. 424 U.S. at 92-93, 96 S.Ct. 612. Accordingly, Buckley rejected the plaintiffs' First Amendment challenge out of hand, holding that the presidential-candidate financing system only further[ed], and did not abridge[ ], the pertinent First Amendment values. Id. Turning to the discrimination claim that is, the claim that the presidential-candidate financing system violated the requirement of equal protection of the laws in its differential treatment of minor-party candidates and major-party candidates Buckley initially questioned whether the exacting scrutiny standard should apply to the system. Id. at 93-94, 96 S.Ct. 612. Buckley cited several precedents and observed that, at the time, a principle ha[d] been developed that restrictions on access to the electoral process must survive exacting scrutiny. Id. Yet Buckley distinguished those precedents, finding them inapplicable because they dealt primarily with state laws requiring a candidate to satisfy certain requirements in order to have his name appear on the ballot. Id. at 94, 96 S.Ct. 612. Such laws, Buckley reasoned, were direct burdens not only on the candidate's ability to run for office but also on the voter's ability to voice preferences regarding representative government and contemporary issues. Id. A public financing system, in contrast, was not restrictive of voters' rights and less restrictive of candidates' [rights], because the system did not prevent any candidate from getting on the ballot or any voter from casting a vote for the candidate of his choice. Id. As a result, Buckley determined that public financing is generally less restrictive of access to the electoral process than the ballot-access regulations dealt with in prior cases. Id. at 95, 96 S.Ct. 612 (emphasis added). Buckley did not, however, complete that line of reasoning and establish a less searching standard for equal protection challenges to public financing systems. Instead, Buckley determined that the presidential-candidate financing system could be upheld even assuming, for the sake of analysis, that the correct standard was exacting scrutiny. After distinguishing the precedents that had applied the exacting scrutiny standard, Buckley held:  In any event, Congress enacted [the presidential-candidate financing system] in furtherance of sufficiently important governmental interests and has not unfairly or unnecessarily burdened the political opportunity of any party or candidate. Id. at 95-96, 96 S.Ct. 612 (emphasis added). Following Buckley, therefore, the starting point for a court in determining whether a public financing system unconstitutionally discriminates against minor parties is to assume, for the sake of analysis, that the correct standard is the version of exacting scrutiny articulated in Buckley. Under that standard, a court must first examine whether the system was enacted... in furtherance of sufficiently important governmental interests. Id. at 95, 96 S.Ct. 612. [7] The court must then determine whether the system burden[s] the political opportunity of any party or candidate in a way that is unfair[ ] or unnecessar[y]. Id. at 96, 96 S.Ct. 612. If the public financing system fares favorably under that two pronged test, the inquiry is over-the system does not violate the Constitution. If, however, the public financing system fails under Buckley's version of the exacting scrutiny standardthat is, if the system furthers insufficiently important governmental interests, or if the system does, in fact, burden the political opportunity of a party or candidate in a way that is unnecessary or unfair then the court must proceed to a second step of the inquiry: the court must finish the line of reasoning that Buckley left unresolved and determine whether a less searching standard applies. Here, in evaluating plaintiffs' claim in Count One, we are not required to perform that second step of the inquiry because, as we set forth in greater detail below, we, like the Supreme Court in Buckley, reject plaintiffs' claim of unconstitutional discrimination even applying Buckley's version of exacting scrutiny. Nonetheless, we conclude that if, in another case, a court determines that a public financing system cannot withstand Buckley's version of exacting scrutiny, the court must proceed to the second step of the inquiry, finish the line of reasoning that Buckley left unresolved, and determine whether a less searching standard applies. [8]