Litigation

States Also Await Ruling in Citizens United

By Peter Hardin

As Supreme Court-watchers await an opinion in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, a potential blockbuster of a campaign finance decision, the Wall Street Journal provides a good reminder of the ruling’s importance to the states.

The high court is deciding whether the government can continue to bar corporations and labor unions from spending directly from their treasuries to support or oppose candidates in federal elections. The ruling could affect how corporations spend  political money in  the 2010 elections, and it ultimately  could affect spending on judicial elections in states where judges are elected.

States showed little interest in Citizens United at first, according to the newspaper article, when it was an obscure case involving a documentary movie slamming then-presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton. But once the Supreme Court asked in June for a re-hearing in the case and identified campaign finance regulation precedents it would reconsider, states became quite interested.

Montana’s state solicitor “saw a threat to his state’s nearly century-old campaign finance laws,” and working with Arizona’s solicitor general, “circulated a friend-of-the-court brief to other states, and 24 added their names,” the newspaper reported. In Montana, said state solicitor Anthony Johnstone, a 1912 voter initiative “has allowed…a political sphere that isn’t dominated by the one or two companies that dominated it in its early, post-territorial days.”

Justice at Stake submitted an amicus brief in the case, warning that allowing corporations to pour even more into the flood of special interest money in judicial elections ?would have a profound and negative effect on the selection of state court judges and could damage the integrity of the judiciary.? You can read the brief by clicking here. You can learn more about the Citizens United case from Gavel Grab or from a JAS press release on the case.

Full post as published by The Gavel on December 08, 2009 (boomark / email).