More Court Cases to Test Campaign-Finance Limits

January 27, 2010 -- WASHINGTON — With corporations and unions now free to spend unlimited amounts on campaign ads, a series of court challenges coast-to-coast could unravel other campaign-finance restrictions — including limits on contributions to political groups.The next test comes today, when a nine-member federal appeals panel in Washington holds oral arguments to consider whether an independent political group, SpeechNow, should be subject to a $5,000 annual cap on donations from individuals. Three judges on the same court last year voted to nullify those restrictions in a separate case involving EMILY's List, which works to elect women candidates who support abortion rights.

The EMILY's List case was one of a string of decisions that have chipped away at campaign regulations since 2007, culminating in last week's sweeping Supreme Court decision that overturned the ban on the use of corporate and union funds for campaign ads that directly call for the election or defeat of presidential and congressional candidates.

"Opponents of campaign-finance laws have teed up a series of cases to push the court ever further toward deregulation," said Richard Hasen, an expert on election law at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. "It is paying off."

"I'm certainly emboldened" by the high court's decision, said Steve Simpson, a senior attorney with the Institute for Justice, a libertarian public-interest law firm, which represents SpeechNow. The firm also has challenged in federal court an Arizona law that allows public financing of state campaigns.

Last week's opinion by the Supreme Court "says that the court is very concerned about the implications of campaign-finance laws for freedom of speech," Simpson said.

Other pending cases include:

•A lawsuit by the Republican National Committee that seeks to overturn a ban on unlimited contributions to political parties by wealthy individuals, unions and companies. Currently, no individual can give more than $30,400 a year to a national party committee.

•A California lawsuit that argues publicly disclosing the names of donors supporting a 2008 referendum that struck down same-sex marriage in the state is unconstitutional.