Court Opinion

ID: 9491045
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 14:02:08.432241+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:54:28.640106
License: Public Domain

FLAUM, Circuit Judge,
dissenting.
I am unable to join the Majority’s conclusion that WRTL’s suit is not justiciable. In my view, the Majority’s position rests on an incorrect characterization of the nature of WRTL’s suit.
The Majority holds that WRTL’s suit is nonjustieiable for two reasons: WRTL’s requested relief calls for an advisory opinion, supra at 1186-87; and WRTL has no standing because its alleged injury is not redressa-ble by the relief it seeks, id. at 1187. (The Opinion also suggests, but does not hold, that WRTL lacks standing because its fear of prosecution is not well-founded. Id. at 1184-85.) The Majority reaches these conclusions because it understands WRTL to be asking the federal courts to “instruct the defendants that the state court will (a la Buckley), or must (á la Massachusetts Citizens for Life) treat the state’s law as inapplicable to candidate comparisons and other forms of implicit advocacy”. Id. at 1185. In other words, the Majority states, WRTL is asking this Court “to say[ ] that the Board must proceed as if Buckley and Massachusetts Citizens for Life were written directly into the Wisconsin statute.” Id. at 1186. See also id. at 1184 (‘WRTL ... filed this suit ... seeking declaratory and injunctive relief that would compel these state officials to administer the state election laws in accord with Buckley and Massachusetts Citizens for Life.”). The Opinion then proceeds, I believe correctly, to explain why such relief would be both inappropriate and ineffective in addressing WRTL’s core concerns about speech-chilling prosecutions.
I respectfully suggest that this analysis, although internally consistent, rests on a faulty premise. WRTL asked the district court to declare the Wisconsin statute (or portions thereof) unconstitutional on its face* and, furthermore, to enjoin enforcement of the law. Striking down the statute as unconstitutional on its face would not require this Court to issue an advisory opinion about how Wisconsin courts should interpret Buckley and Massachusetts Citizens for Life in various cases against third parties, as the Majority fears. If the statute were declared unconstitutional, there would be no valid enactment for the state courts to interpret. Moreover, striking down the citizen suit provisions as unconstitutional would effectively put an end to such suits altogether, which would seem to obviate the Majority’s re-dressability concern.
The Majority, however, interprets WRTL’s suit to be asking for the federal courts to impose a narrowing construction on the Wisconsin statute (or to enjoin the state courts from failing to employ such a construction) that would force the state courts to adhere to Buckley and other precedent. This understanding of WRTL’s suit is contradicted by WRTL’s argument, made in response to the district court’s decision to abstain, that no such narrowing construction is appropriate or available. See Appellant’s Br. at 20-25 (arguing that the district court erred in abstaining because the statutes at issue are not susceptible to a limiting construction).
Although the Majority acknowledges at one point that this is a facial attack on the Wisconsin statute — though an “untenable” one, in its view — it glosses over this point with the statement that “actual injury and redressability are essential no matter how the challenge is cast”. Supra at 1186. Of course, I agree with this statement in principle, but since the Majority never holds that WRTL lacks a credible threat of prosecution, and the redressability concern would vanish if we were to declare the citizen suit provisions unconstitutional, I believe that WRTL’s suit meets both the injury and the redressa-bility criteria. See Steel Co. v. Citizens for a Better Env’t, — U.S.-, 118 S.Ct. 1003, 1018,-L.Ed.2d-(1998) (noting that a plaintiff seeking injunctive relief to prevent “threatened injury” or “the imminence of a future violation” satisfies the injury and re-*1189dressability criteria when “the injunctive relief requested would remedy that alleged harm”). The Majority suggests that WRTL’s facial challenge would fail because “the Supreme Court of Wisconsin has no less ability to construe the state law in a constitutional fashion than the Supreme Court of the United States displayed in Buckley.” Supra at 1186. This may turn out to be correct, but in my view the merits of this facial challenge (and the related issue of abstention) require the attention of the court.
Thus, it is my judgment that the Majority opinion, though well-reasoned, addresses the wrong questions. Although it is not certain that the merits would ultimately be reached, given the reasons for abstention presented by the district court, I cannot conclude that WRTL’s suit is nonjustieiable. Accordingly, I respectfully dissent.

 Specifically, WRTL contends that the Wisconsin statutes impose unconstitutional registration requirements, both by defining “political committees” too broadly and by failing to exempt from registration certain kinds of not-for-profit organizations. WRTL also claims that the Board enforcement and citizen suit provisions permit unconstitutional prior restraints on protected speech.