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

Heading: Plaintiffs' Standing to Challenge the Trigger Provisions

Text: As a threshold matter, defendants argue that plaintiffs lack standing to challenge the trigger provisions. We agree with the District Court, however, that plaintiffs do have standing on Counts Two and Three. See Green Party II, 648 F.Supp.2d at 369-70. To qualify for standing, a claimant must present an injury that is concrete, particularized, and actual or imminent; fairly traceable to the defendant's challenged behavior; and likely to be redressed by a favorable ruling. Davis, 128 S.Ct. at 2768 (citing Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 560-61, 112 S.Ct. 2130, 119 L.Ed.2d 351 (1992)). Defendants' primary claim is that plaintiffs have failed to allege an injury that is concrete, particularized, and actual or imminent. Id. With respect to the excess expenditure provision, plaintiffs have submitted very little evidence to suggest that any member of the Green Party or the Libertarian Party will ever raise enough money (or spend enough of his or her own money) to trigger the excess expenditure provisions. As discussed above, see Count One, section I, ante, Davis addressed 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. Davis recognized that a potential candidate had standing to challenge the Millionaire's Amendment where the candidate had declared his candidacy and his intent to spend more than $350,000 of personal funds in the general election campaign. Id. at 2769. There, however, it was undisputed that the candidate's personal wealth was sufficient to enable him to spend more than $350,000 on his campaign. Here, by contrast, no plaintiff (or member of one of the plaintiff minor parties) has declared an intention to spend enough personal wealth to trigger the excess expenditure provision, and there is very little evidence to suggest that any minor-party candidate in Connecticut could plausibly raise enough money through private contributions to trigger the excess expenditure provision. Nonetheless, the record shows that the Green Party does, on occasion, choose to endorse a major-party candidate for a particular office rather than run a candidate of its own (this is referred to as cross-endorsement). Insofar as the Green Party cross-endorses a major-party candidate who declines to participate in the CEP, the Green Party members may choose to make contributions to that candidate, and those contributionscombined with the candidate's other fundraising effortscould cause the candidate to trigger the excess expenditure provision. Therefore, the existence of the excess expenditure provision could have the effect of chilling plaintiffs' contributions to cross-endorsed candidates. See Green Party II, 648 F.Supp.2d at 368-69. We conclude that this injury is sufficiently concrete, particularized, and ... imminent to provide plaintiffs with standing to assert Count Two. The analysis is similar with respect to the independent expenditure provision. If the Green Party chooses to cross-endorse a major-party candidate, any independent expenditures made by the Green Party advocating for the defeat of the candidate's opponent could trigger the independent expenditure provision. We conclude, therefore, that the potential chilling effect on plaintiffs' independent expenditures, see id., is sufficient to provide plaintiffs with standing to assert Count Three.