Court Opinion

ID: 9751413
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 16:25:40.043469+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:18:13.099198
License: Public Domain

SAYLOR, Justice,
dissenting.
This matter involves a conflict between a state election law which the common pleas court has apparently construed as proscribing certain third-party independent advertising expenditures related to a state-wide judicial election, and the constitutionally protected right of free expression as exercised through such expenditures. I share Mr. Justice Castille’s *611conclusion that the injunction as entered by the common pleas court cannot be fully reconciled with prevailing First Amendment jurisprudence in the campaign finance arena. Thus, I also favor the exercise of our jurisdiction given the applicable legal authority and the interests involved.
Rather than vacate the common pleas court’s order in its entirety, however, I would instead narrow its effect. Respondents’ complaint challenged the airing of two television advertisements, one which focuses upon the qualifications, record, and experience of the Republican candidate for the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, presently a sitting judge of the Superior Court, the Honorable Michael Eakin, while the other was critical of the result in two criminal cases in which the Democratic candidate, the Honorable Kate Ford Elliott, participated in her capacity as a judge of the Superior Court. Both parties appear to agree that the election laws at issue would on their face subject Applicant to organizational, disclosure, and reporting requirements. Both also appear to agree that the statute should be read in light of First Amendment principles which accord protection from such regulation to advocacy focusing upon election issues that does not expressly sponsor the election or defeat of an identified candidate. Applicant urges that neither ad falls within this category, as neither contains a specific exhortation to vote for or against a candidate. Respondent, on the other hand, urges that the content of the electoral message is relevant, such that express candidate advocacy is present if when read as a whole, and with limited reference to external events, it could be susceptible of no other reasonable interpretation but as an exhortation to vote for or against a specific candidate.
As Applicant’s position is more closely aligned with the specific directives of the United States Supreme Court as reflected in a prevailing body of jurisprudence, and Respondents’ contextual approach is constructed upon a minority position, I simply cannot conclude that a clear right to relief was established on the terms of the arguments presented concerning the guiding First Amendment standard.
*612As indicated, however, although I do not believe that the preliminary injunction can be justified based upon the legal standard advocated by Respondents in light of existing deci-sional law, I would not vacate the injunction in its entirety, but rather, would limit its scope based upon a factual distinction between the two advertisements at issue. With regard to the advertisement focusing upon general qualifications, accomplishments, and experience, although candidate specific, the message would seem to fall plainly within the realm of issue advocacy. The second advertisement, however, merely focused on the results of two criminal cases in which an appellate court jurist participated and would seem to more closely skirt the boundary between issue and candidate advocacy. Significantly, such communication was devoid of any form of meaningful analysis concerning the reasoning applied to reach the decisions, or an alternate line of reasoning that would justify a contrary result, and thus, functioned at a level of abstraction restrictive of issue-type evaluation of judicial performance. In my view, the anecdotal discussion of a fractional component of a judge’s record at this level of abstraction is distinguishable from the more general form of issue advocacy, albeit candidate specific, represented by the qualifications/accomplishments/experience ad. This brings this form of advertising closer to the category of express candidate advocacy, which would subject the Applicant advertiser to the organizational, disclosure, and reporting requirements of the Pennsylvania Election Code.
In such circumstances, I would have entered an order invoking this Court’s jurisdiction to restrict the effect of the preliminary injunction in accordance with the foregoing.
Justice NEWMAN joins this dissenting statement.