Opinion ID: 177390
Heading Depth: 5
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: “Independent Expenditure” and “Political

Text: Advertising” Definitions [18] We next turn to Human Life’s contention that the Disclosure Law’s definitions for “independent expenditure” and “political advertising” are too expansive to be substantially related to the government’s important interest. The Disclosure Law defines “independent expenditure” in terms of money spent “in support of or opposition to” a candidate or ballot initiative, Wash. Rev. Code § 42.17.100, and it defines “political advertising” as mass communications “used for the purpose of appealing, directly or indirectly,” for support in any election campaign, id. § 42.17.020(38). Human Life argues that these definitions are facially unconstitutional because they encompass issue advocacy instead of extending only to express advocacy or its functional equivalent. Human Life concedes that the government may impose disclosure requirements on a radio advertisement that expressly urges Washingtonians to vote for or against a particular ballot initiative, but it argues that the government may not impose disclosure requirements on advertisements that avoid references to particular ballot initiatives, and instead speak only about the issues involved in pending ballot initiatives. In other words, Human Life argues that there is a constitutionally significant distinction between an advertisement saying, “physician-assisted suicide is bad policy,” at a time when a measure like Initiative 1000 is on the ballot and an advertisement saying, “vote against Initiative 1000.” Human Life’s position is that the latter advertisement, which is express advocacy, may be subject to disclosure requirements, whereas the former advertisement is constitutionally sacrosanct issue advocacy that may not be regulated. On this basis, it argues that the burdens imposed by the Disclosure Law’s political committee obligations are categorically unconstitutional.5 5 Although the Fourth Circuit adopted this position in Leake, 525 F.3d at 281-83, its decision predates Citizens United and Reed and therefore is unpersuasive in the disclosure context. 17144 HUMAN LIFE OF WASHINGTON v. BRUMSICKLE Arguing that Buckley established a distinction between the ability to regulate express and issue advocacy, Human Life cites WRTL. In WRTL, the Supreme Court considered the constitutionality of a federal limitation on campaign speech that prohibited “electioneering communications” during certain “blackout dates” leading up to an election as applied to three advertisements that WRTL wished to pursue. WRTL, 551 U.S. at 464. Although the ads were clearly prohibited by the federal statute, they did not contain “magic words of express advocacy” as identified in Buckley. The Court had already determined in McConnell that such magic words were not a prerequisite to regulation and that, as long as the communications were the “functional equivalent” of express advocacy, they fell within the definition of communications constitutionally subject to disclosure. McConnell, 540 U.S. at 193-94. Thus, the question before the WRTL Court was the scope of the definition of “functional equivalent.” The Court defined “express advocacy or its functional equivalent” as communications “susceptible of no reasonable interpretation other than as an appeal to vote for or against a specific candidate.” WRTL, 551 U.S. at 469-70. The Court concluded that WRTL’s ads — which did not discuss an issue in an upcoming election, did not urge their audience to vote for or against any candidate or measure, and merely encouraged citizens to contact their senators and urge them to oppose an ongoing filibuster — were neither express advocacy nor “susceptible of no reasonable interpretation other than as an appeal for a vote.” Id. at 458-60, 470. Because they did not fall within the express advocacy category that was automatically constitutionally permissible, the Court subjected the regulations to strict scrutiny. Concluding that it had “never recognized a compelling interest in regulating ads, like WRTL’s, that are neither express advocacy nor its functional equivalent,” id. at 464-65, the Court held that the ads could not constitutionally be subject to the federal prohibition on electioneering communications, id. at 466. HUMAN LIFE OF WASHINGTON v. BRUMSICKLE 17145 [19] As a preliminary matter, we could arguably dispose of Human Life’s challenge to the disclosure requirements by concluding that its communications constitute the functional equivalent of express advocacy under WRTL. Human Life’s proposed communications, even if they do not mention Initiative 1000 by name, are susceptible of no reasonable interpretation other than as an urgent appeal to vote down the measure. The communications explicitly state that physicianassisted suicide has reentered the realm of public debate and that the situation demands action. Even if the communications were less obvious, the WRTL Court noted that certain background information may be relevant in determining whether a communication can reasonably be interpreted only as relating to a specific election or vote. Id. at 473-74. For example, the Court mentioned as a consideration the timing element — that is, if an ad “describes a legislative issue that is either currently the subject of legislative scrutiny or likely to be the subject of scrutiny in the near future,” it is more likely it should be interpreted as appealing for a vote. Id. at 474 (quoting Wis. Right to Life, Inc. v. FEC, 466 F. Supp. 2d 195, 207 (D.D.C. 2006)). Human Life itself admits that timing is particularly relevant to its proposed communications; in elaborating on the burden imposed by the Disclosure Law, it stated in its verified complaint that “2008 is an especially vital time for HLW to address the physician-assisted suicide issue because people will again be unusually attentive as it swirls to the forefront of public attention.” Given their detailed language and unique timing, the communications proposed by Human Life are certainly express advocacy or its functional equivalent. Moreover, the ads cannot be compared with the communications at issue in WRTL, which did not involve an issue that was the subject of an election and merely encouraged voters to engage in communication with their representatives. [20] However, even if Human Life’s proposed communications constitute unadulterated issue advocacy, its argument has been foreclosed by the Supreme Court’s opinion in Citizens United. Considering the possibility of a bright-line rule 17146 HUMAN LIFE OF WASHINGTON v. BRUMSICKLE distinguishing express and issue advocacy, the Court stated, “[W]e reject Citizen United’s contention that the disclosure requirements must be limited to speech that is the functional equivalent of express advocacy.” Citizens United, 130 S. Ct. at 915. Citing Buckley, MCFL, and McConnell, the Court emphasized the established principle that “disclosure is a less restrictive alternative to more comprehensive regulations of speech,” and it recited the list of decisions in which the Court had upheld disclosure requirements under the same principles it used to strike down financial limitations. Id. In addition, the Court explained that the distinction between express and issue advocacy that was established by the narrowly construed statutory definitions in cases like WRTL did not translate into the disclosure context. The Court explained: Citizens United claims that . . . [t]he principal opinion in WRTL limited [BCRA’s] restrictions on independent expenditures to express advocacy and its functional equivalent. Citizens United seeks to import a similar distinction into BCRA’s disclosure requirements. We reject this contention. The Court has explained that disclosure is a less restrictive alternative to more comprehensive regulations of speech. Id. (citations omitted). Given the Court’s analysis in Citizens United, and its holding that the government may impose disclosure requirements on speech, the position that disclosure requirements cannot constitutionally reach issue advocacy is unsupportable. In advocating that position, Human Life does no more than reiterate arguments that have been rejected by the Supreme Court. First, in upholding the application of disclosure requirements to electioneering communications, the McConnell Court rejected the notion that Buckley establishes “a constitutionally mandated line between express advocacy and socalled issue advocacy, and that speakers possess an inviolable HUMAN LIFE OF WASHINGTON v. BRUMSICKLE 17147 First Amendment right to engage in the latter category of speech.” McConnell, 540 U.S. at 190; see also id. at 193 (rejecting the notion “that the First Amendment erects a rigid barrier between express advocacy and so-called issue advocacy”). The Court found that this notion “misapprehends our prior decisions” because “a plain reading of Buckley makes clear that the express advocacy limitation, in both the expenditure and the disclosure contexts, was the product of statutory interpretation rather than a constitutional command.” Id. at 190-91. Also, Human Life’s expansive reading of WRTL as concluding that issue advocacy cannot be subject to disclosure requirements was rejected in Citizens United. Thus, imposing disclosure obligations on communicators engaged in issue advocacy is not per se unconstitutional; instead, the constitutionality of the obligations is determined by whether they are substantially related to a sufficiently important governmental interest. Having dispensed with the idea that only express advocacy and its functional equivalent are subject to government regulation, and that any government regulation of issue advocacy is therefore unconstitutional, we turn to the operative question: whether the Disclosure Law’s requirements for “independent expenditures” and “political advertising” are substantially related to Washington State’s informational interest. We conclude that they are. In Citizens United, the Supreme Court unreservedly affirmed the public’s interest “in knowing who is speaking about a candidate shortly before an election,” and it concluded that “the informational interest alone” was sufficient to support federal campaign finance disclosure requirements.6 Citi- 6 Indeed, the Citizens United Court recognized not only the public’s interest in knowing who is speaking about a candidate, and which donors might wield influence over a candidate, but also the interest of shareholders in determining “whether their corporation’s political speech advances the corporation’s interest in making profits.” Citizens United, 130 S. Ct. 17148 HUMAN LIFE OF WASHINGTON v. BRUMSICKLE zens United, 130 S. Ct. at 915-16. Upholding the line of cases that recognize the importance of the government’s informational interest, the Court reasoned: The First Amendment protects political speech; and disclosure permits citizens and shareholders to react to the speech of corporate entities in a proper way. This transparency enables the electorate to make informed decisions and give proper weight to different speakers and messages. Id. at 916. As in Citizens United, Washington voters’ interest in knowing who is speaking about physician-assisted suicide shortly before the vote on a ballot initiative that proposes to legalize that practice is sufficient to support the Disclosure Law’s requirements. Under these circumstances, where the “[v]oters act as legislators,” CPLC-I, 328 F.3d at 1106, the government has a vital interest in providing the public with information about who is trying to sway its opinion. The ability of voters to determine who is behind the advertisements seeking to shape their views is integral to the “full realization of the American ideal of government.” Harriss, 347 U.S. at 625. at 916. The Court recognized that the value of the information generated by disclosure was not limited to informing voters how to vote, but included providing citizens with the ability “to hold corporations and elected officials accountable for their positions and supporters” and “to react to the speech of corporate entities in a proper way.” Id. The reality of this corporate accountability function is illustrated by the public’s reaction in August 2010 to a political contribution by Target to an anti-gay gubernatorial candidate. See Jia Lynn Yang & Dan Eggen, Campaign Spending Puts Target in Bull’s-Eye, Wash. Post, Aug. 19, 2010. After disclosure of the contribution sparked an outcry from the gay community, one campaign finance expert suggested that major corporations “are now likely to think twice before giving corporate money to groups that may later prove controversial.” Id. HUMAN LIFE OF WASHINGTON v. BRUMSICKLE 17149 Given the complex detail involved in ballot initiatives, and the sheer volume of relevant information confronting voters, voters cannot be expected to make such a determination on their own. Thus, to prevent the public from being misled by special interest groups “masquerading as proponents of the public weal,” the voters who passed Washington’s Disclosure Law “merely provided for a modicum of information from those” who wish to influence the public’s vote. Id.; see also McConnell, 540 U.S. at 196-97 (noting that groups sometimes use “dubious and misleading names,” like “Citizens for Better Medicare,” a group funded by the pharmaceutical industry); Editorial, The Secret Election, N.Y. Times, Sept. 18, 2010 (noting the ability of 501(c)(4) organizations “with disingenuously innocuous names like American Crossroads and the American Action Network” to serve as “a funnel for anonymous campaign donations”). We have no trouble concluding that Washington’s interest in informing the electorate through the Disclosure Law is sufficiently important. [21] Before analyzing the relationship between the particular burdens imposed by the Disclosure Law and the government interests it furthers, we note that there is less danger of a regulation sweeping too broadly in the context of a ballot measure than in a candidate election. As the district court noted, where a disclosure requirement regulates issue advocacy, the scope of that regulation is naturally “more targeted and limited” when the relevant vote involves a ballot initiative. Human Life, 2009 WL 62144, at . “Ballot initiatives present a single issue for public referendum,” and thus the only relevant campaign speech that a disclosure requirement could reach is “speech intended to influence the voter’s opinion as to the merits of this single issue — in other words, it is ‘issue advocacy,’ plain and simple.” Id. Whereas the broadly defined regulation of campaign speech in the candidate election context “threatens to burden debate on a broad range of issues — indeed, any issue that is arguably ‘pertinent’ to the election,” broadly defined speech regulation in the ballot measure context poses a much less significant burden; 17150 HUMAN LIFE OF WASHINGTON v. BRUMSICKLE in the ballot context, the only issue advocacy that could potentially be regulated is advocacy regarding “the single issue put before the public.” Id. Thus, the potential of the Disclosure Law to incidentally regulate issue advocacy, to which Human Life objects, would engender far more concern if the relevant election involved a candidate. In the ballot initiative context, on the other hand, where express and issue advocacy are arguably “one and the same,” any incidental regulation of issue advocacy imposes more limited burdens that are more likely to be substantially related to the government’s interests. Because regulation of issue advocacy in the ballot context is virtually indistinguishable from regulation of express advocacy (an admittedly appropriate enterprise), such regulation is more closely related to the government’s interest in informing the electorate. We agree with the district court’s reasoning that “[f]rom the perspective of the state’s compelling interest,” it makes little difference whether speech urges the public to vote for or against a ballot measure implicating a particular issue or whether it advocates or attacks that particular issue while the ballot measure is pending.7 The particular requirements of Washington’s Disclosure Law are substantially related to the government’s informational interest in that they target only those expenditures and advertisements made in conjunction with an ongoing election or vote. Reporting requirements do not extend indiscriminately to all issue advocacy conducted at any time — regulating, for example, an advertisement about physician-assisted suicide placed at a time when no related ballot measure is pending. Rather, by definition, disclosure obligations do not apply absent a pending election or ballot initiative campaign. See Wash. Rev. Code § 42.17.100(1) (defining “independent expenditure” as an expenditure made to support or oppose a 7 Compare this to a candidate election, where there is a greater distance between speech urging a vote for or against a particular candidate and advocating or attacking one of a “broad range of issues” on which the candidate may have a particular view. HUMAN LIFE OF WASHINGTON v. BRUMSICKLE 17151 “candidate or ballot proposition”); id. § 42.17.020(38) (defining “political advertising” as communications that support or oppose an “election campaign”). Moreover, once the initial two-page registration form is filed, the filing of additional special reports is pegged to the dates of the upcoming election. For independent expenditures, an initial financial disclosure report is required only if certain financial thresholds are passed “during the . . . election campaign,” and subsequent reporting requirements, which become due as the date of the vote approaches, arise only if additional expenditures have been made during the campaign period. Id. § 42.17.100(2)-(3). Similarly, special reports for political advertising are required only if the advertisement has a fair market value of more than $1,000 and the advertisement is run during the three-week run-up to the vote. See id. § 42.17.103(1). All disclosure obligations cease shortly after the relevant vote has taken place. Id. § 42.17.100(3). [22] Thus, under the Disclosure Law, an organization engaging in issue advocacy like Human Life may avoid disclosure requirements any time that the issue about which it is speaking is not the subject of a ballot initiative or other public vote. Once the issue becomes the subject of a ballot initiative campaign, Human Life may continue to advocate all it wants; the only difference is that it must provide certain disclosures at times tied to the date of the vote. Human Life itself recognizes the unique importance of the temporal window immediately preceding a vote. As it stated in its complaint, the year 2008 was “a special opportunity” and “an especially vital time” for it to discuss physician-assisted suicide. It explained that “[b]ecause physician-assisted suicide is now especially in the public awareness and debate, people will be particularly receptive to arguments about the physician-assisted suicide issue.” For the same reasons that Human Life had a heightened interest in speaking about physician-assisted suicide during the run-up to the Initiative 1000 vote, Washingtonians had a heightened interest in knowing who was trying to sway their views on the topic and how much they were willing to spend 17152 HUMAN LIFE OF WASHINGTON v. BRUMSICKLE to achieve that goal. We conclude that the Disclosure Law’s requirements for independent expenditures and political advertising are substantially related to that interest.8