Court Opinion

ID: 9483148
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 09:13:03.446324+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:49:27.814733
License: Public Domain

RUTH BADER GINSBURG, Circuit Judge,
joined by HARRY T. EDWARDS, Circuit Judge, concurring in the court’s opinion:
I agree, for reasons well stated in the court’s opinion, that the First Amendment does not instruct the judiciary to disturb Congress’ sensible and amply justified design. To emphasize two points, however, I add this separate statement. First, the provision challenged here does not differentiate on the basis of the solicitor’s viewpoint. Second, whatever formula one uses to describe the appropriate “level of scrutiny,” decisionmakers in all three branches of government should be alert to this reality: taxing and spending decisions — even those that might appear to offer the individual “a choice” or to leave her “no worse off” than she would have been absent government involvement — can seriously interfere with the exercise of constitutional freedoms. See, e.g., FCC v. League of Women Voters, 468 U.S. 364, 400-01, 104 S.Ct. 3106, 3127-28, 82 L.Ed.2d 278 (1984) (Congress may not impose blanket requirement that every station receiving Corporation for Public Broadcasting funding refrain from editorializing); cf. City of Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Center, Inc., 473 U.S. 432, 451-52, 105 S.Ct. 3249, 3260-61, 87 L.Ed.2d 313 (1985) (Stevens, J., concurring) (Court’s equal protection decisions “reflect a continuum of judgmental responses to differing classifications” rather than three discrete “tiers” of scrutiny).
Government actions of the character we review in this case are most troublesome— and in greatest need of justification — when distinctions are drawn based on the point of view a speaker espouses or when a *1119benefit is provided contingent on an individual’s relinquishing a civil right. See, e.g., United States v. Kokinda, 497 U.S. 720, 110 S.Ct. 3115, 3124-25, 111 L.Ed.2d 571 (1990) (plurality opinion); Cornelius v. NAACP Legal Defense & Educ. Fund, Inc., 473 U.S. 788, 811-12, 105 S.Ct. 3439, 3453-54, 87 L.Ed.2d 567 (1985); Speiser v. Randall, 357 U.S. 513, 78 S.Ct. 1332, 2 L.Ed.2d 1460 (1958). This case entails neither of these problematic elements. Although the defendants here repeatedly assert that § 438(a)(4) is antagonistic to certain First Amendment activity — i.e., solicitation, they do not contend that the challenged provision was intended to favor or has the effect of favoring a particular speaker or set of ideas. Nor are they able credibly to portray the statute as one that impels political committees and others to desist from enlisting the financial assistance of their fellow citizens.
Section 438(a)(4) does not condition access to FEC contributor lists by ACPA and other fund seekers on their abstaining from solicitation altogether, nor even does it inhibit them from contacting the very individuals whose names appear on the FEC lists they inspect (so long as solicitees’ names are obtained from an independent source). The prescription properly ranks with the arrangement upheld by the Court in Regan v. Taxation with Representation, 461 U.S. 540, 544, 103 S.Ct. 1997, 2000, 76 L.Ed.2d 129 (1981) (bifurcated statutory regime allows charitable corporation to receive tax deductible contributions if it confines lobbying activity to separate entity that receives nondeductible contributions), and does not exact a “penalty” for the exercise of a constitutional right. See, e.g., Perry v. Sindermann, 408 U.S. 593, 597, 92 S.Ct. 2694, 2697, 33 L.Ed.2d 570 (1972); see also Harris v. McRae, 448 U.S. 297, 317 n. 19, 100 S.Ct. 2671, 2688 n. 19, 65 L.Ed.2d 784 (1980) (although government need not fund abortion, “substantial constitutional question” would arise if government were to “withhold all Medicaid benefits” from a woman who terminated her pregnancy by abortion (emphasis supplied)).
Defendants do not assert that the Commission, in its role as clearinghouse for donor lists, hulks so large that potential or pre-existing channels for obtaining contributor information have been, as a practical matter, sealed off. See, e.g., Frost & Frost Trucking v. Railroad Comm’n, 271 U.S. 583, 46 S.Ct. 605, 70 L.Ed. 1101 (1926). To the contrary, it is evident that IFI may still obtain names of potential contributors in each of two familiar ways: by itself undertaking the effort or by purchasing a list from a seller who has done the sweat work.