Opinion ID: 3065781
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Ban on Contributions from Political Parties

Text: Since the district court issued its ruling, the City enacted a new provision, codified as ECCO § 27.2934, which allows 8096 THALHEIMER v. SAN DIEGO political parties to make contributions to candidates of up to $1,000 per election cycle. Plaintiffs initiated separate litigation challenging the constitutionality of the new provision and requesting a preliminary injunction. The district court denied the request for injunctive relief, allowing the City to enforce the new law pending final judgment. That litigation is not currently before us, but we must consider if the new law has rendered this aspect of the appeal moot. [14] The City acknowledges that it adopted the new provision in direct response to the district court’s earlier issuance of a preliminary injunction against enforcement of ECCO §§ 27.2950-51 as applied to political parties. We therefore conclude that this change does “not deprive the federal courts of jurisdiction to decide the constitutional question because of the well-settled principle that a defendant’s voluntary cessation of a challenged practice does not deprive a federal court of its power to determine the legality of the practice.” Jacobus v. Alaska, 338 F.3d 1095, 1103 (9th Cir. 2003) (quoting Carreras v. City of Anaheim, 768 F.2d 1039, 1047 (9th Cir. 1985)). “These concerns are of particular force in a case like the present one, in which the ‘voluntary cessation’ occurred only in response to the district court’s judgment.” Id. As for Plaintiffs’ likely success on the merits, the district court framed the matter as a choice between the Supreme Court decisions in Colorado II and Randall. Decided in 2001, Colorado II involved a challenge to the Federal Election Campaign Act’s limits on political parties’ coordinated expenditures. FECA capped coordinated spending between candidates and parties, based on district size and the relative cost of the media market. For candidates for the U.S. Senate, this ranged from $67,500 to $1,636,438. For candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives, it ranged from $33,780 to $67,560. Parties were also allowed to give up to $5,000 in direct contributions to candidates. 533 U.S. at 439 n.3, 442 n.7. The Court held that parties’ coordinated expenditures should be treated the same as contributions, and that they THALHEIMER v. SAN DIEGO 8097 could be restricted to further the government’s anticircumvention interest. Id. at 456, 465. In so ruling, the Court cautioned against treating political parties differently from other speakers for the purposes of analyzing contribution limits. See id. at 455-56 (“The Party’s arguments for being treated differently from other political actors subject to limitation on political spending under the Act do not pan out . . . . [w]e accordingly apply to a party’s coordinated spending limitation the same scrutiny we have applied to the other political actors . . . .”); id. at 454 (stating that a “party is not, therefore, in a unique position” compared with other contributors in terms of its coordinated spending); see also Jacobus, 338 F.3d at 1109 (“In fact, in Colorado Republican II the Court specifically rejected the contention that party contributions merited a stricter standard of scrutiny . . . .”). Five years later, however, the Supreme Court suggested that political parties do in fact have a special role requiring unique attention when analyzing contribution limits. In Randall, the Court confronted a challenge to Vermont’s campaign finance statute, which included contribution limits for state races of $200 to $400 per candidate, per cycle, depending on the office, which applied equally to individuals, committees, and political parties. 548 U.S. at 238. For the first time, the Court held that a contribution limit violated the First Amendment by failing the closely drawn scrutiny standard of review. Justice Breyer’s plurality opinion announced the judgment of the Court.5 Acknowledging that “[s]ince Buckley, the Court has consistently upheld contribution limits in other statutes,” 5 Therefore, we follow the plurality opinion as persuasive authority, though “not a binding precedent.” Texas v. Brown, 460 U.S. 730, 737 (1983) (noting that a plurality opinion consisting of “the considered opinion of four Members of this Court” was not binding, but “should obviously be the point of reference for further discussion of the issue”). Justice Breyer’s plurality opinion was joined by two justices, one in full and one in part. Randall, 548 U.S. at 235. 8098 THALHEIMER v. SAN DIEGO the plurality nonetheless concluded that “we must recognize the existence of some lower bound,” and Vermont’s very low contribution limits fell below that minimal threshold. Id. at 247-48. The Randall plurality opinion directed courts to identify that threshold by scouring the record to look for “danger signs” that contribution limits are low enough to threaten “democratic accountability.” Id. at 248-49. Among the “danger signs” in the Vermont case were the statute’s treatment of political parties. The plurality noted that Vermont applied “its $200 to $400 limits—precisely the same limits it applies to an individual—to virtually all affiliates of a political party taken together as if they were a single contributor.” Id. at 257. The limitations covered monetary contributions to candidates and “expenditures in kind” such as “stamps, stationery, coffee, doughnuts, gasoline, campaign buttons, and so forth,” thus “severely limit[ing] the ability of a party to assist its candidates’ campaigns by engaging in coordinated spending on advertising, candidate events, voter lists, mass mailings, even yard signs.” Id. The plurality also expressed concern that the limits would discourage voters lacking detailed knowledge of state legislative races from contributing small amounts to parties in the hope that the parties would then contribute to like-minded candidates. Id. at 257-58. The Randall plurality did not address the general statements in Colorado II about the treatment of political parties. However, it explained that the federal limits of at least $67,560 in coordinated spending and $5,000 in direct cash contributions for U.S. Senate candidates, and at least $33,780 in coordinated spending and $5,000 in direct cash contributions for U.S. House candidates, were “far less problematic” than Vermont’s much lower $200-$400 contribution limits. Id. at 258. The plurality therefore concluded that the limitations at issue “would reduce the voice of political parties in Vermont to a whisper,” and thus the “special party-related harms” were a factor weighing against the THALHEIMER v. SAN DIEGO 8099 constitutional validity of Vermont’s contribution limits. Id. at 259. It remains unclear whether the Randall plurality opinion actually supersedes Colorado II and holds that political parties must be treated differently than other contributors, or whether the analysis of “special party-related harms” was merely one case-specific factor. The Second Circuit recently concluded that with its focus on the integrity of the electoral process as a whole, as opposed to the expressive interest of the individual campaign contributor, the multifactor test in the Randall plurality opinion only “addressed general contribution limits that applied to all citizens.” Green Party, 616 F.3d at 201. Accordingly, the Green Party court held that the Randall analysis did not apply to Connecticut’s narrow contribution limits targeting only public contractors, lobbyists, and affiliated individuals and entities. Id. Here the City’s law prohibits political party contributions as part of a comprehensive restriction on direct donations by all non-individual organizations, including political parties, corporations, partnerships, unions, and committees. This places the challenged provision somewhere between the Vermont statute that regulated the state’s entire electoral process, and the Connecticut law in Green Party that targeted a narrow class of political speakers. [15] The Supreme Court has directed that when a district court grants a preliminary injunction protecting First Amendment rights, “[i]f the underlying constitutional question is close . . . we should uphold the injunction and remand for trial on the merits.” Ashcroft, 542 U.S. at 664-65. Given the close constitutional question here and the narrow nature of our inquiry at the preliminary injunction stage, we hold that the district court did not abuse its discretion in concluding that Plaintiffs were likely to succeed on the merits of their challenge to the application of these ECCO provisions to political parties. See also Cal. Prolife Council Political Action Comm. v. Scully, 164 F.3d 1189, 1190 (9th Cir. 1999). 8100 THALHEIMER v. SAN DIEGO