Litigation

Tracking How ?Citizens United? Affects the States

By Peter Hardin

The fallout from the Citizens United decision is causing turbulence in Colorado, where Gov. Bill Ritter (photo at right) is preparing to ask the Colorado Supreme Court if the ruling renders any state campaign finance laws unconstitutional.

Colorado’s secretary of state, Bernie Buescher, has suggested he believes Citizens United invalidates two parts of Amendment 27, passed by voters in 2002, that bar spending on political advertising by corporations and unions, according to an Associated Press article.

There are many ways the U.S. Supreme Court ruling is affecting states like Colorado either individually or broadly, and the State of Elections blog has launched an effort to keep track of these developments. The blog is run by students of the Election Law Society at William & Mary Law School. Two top areas of interest for the blog are the ruling’s impact on state judicial elections and how it affects state corporate disclosure laws.

In Colorado, “Republicans see overturning Amendment 27 as a potential game-changer in an important election year,” but they haven’t decided yet whether to pursue a lawsuit, according to the AP.

In the continuing  analysis of Citizens United, David Savage asserts in the Los Angeles Times that the ruling “giving corporations the right to spend freely on elections reflects a profound shift among the conservative justices on the importance of the 1st Amendment and the nature of corporations.”

In the Wall Street Journal, Ralph Nader and Robert Weissman  write “The Case Against Corporate Speech” and call for a constitutional amendment in response to Citizens United. A Wall Street Journal news article reports that an effort by activist shareholder groups to persuade companies to disclose  political spending is “taking on new urgency” in the wake of the decision.

Full post as published by The Gavel on February 10, 2010 (boomark / email).