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Florida Judicial Candidates Can't Solicit Donations on Personal Facebook Pages

By Eric Lipman

Do you "like" Lloyd Comiter, candidate for County Court Judge in Palm Beach County, Fla.? Do you maybe want to contribute to his campaign? You can do that on Facebook. But, according to a recent opinion from the Florida Supreme Court Judicial Ethics Advisory Committee (via the Legal Profession Blog), only because the appeals for donations are on a page sponsored by Comiter's election committee, rather than his personal page. Here's the sum total of the Ethics Committee's wisdom on the topic: Canon 7C(1), provides that a candidate or judge may not personally solicit campaign funds, but may establish committees of responsible persons to raise funds and to obtain public statements of support for the judge's campaign. Websites and Facebook pages promoting the candidacy of a judge or judicial candidates should be established and maintained by these committees, and not by the judge or judicial candidate personally. The Committee then cites an earlier ethics opinion that reaches the same conclusion with regard to personal vs. election committee websites. So, remember, if you're running for a judgeship in Florida, you need to have at least enough "friends" to constitute a "committee of responsible persons" before you can start peppering people's news...

Full post as published by Legal Blog Watch on August 04, 2010 (boomark / email).