{"id":6200,"date":"2010-08-18T09:57:18","date_gmt":"2010-08-18T16:57:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nevadanewsandviews.com\/?p=6200"},"modified":"2010-08-18T09:57:18","modified_gmt":"2010-08-18T16:57:18","slug":"ij-petitions-supremes-to-slap-down-az%e2%80%99s-speech-control-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nevadanewsandviews.com\/ij-petitions-supremes-to-slap-down-az%e2%80%99s-speech-control-law\/","title":{"rendered":"IJ Petitions Supremes to Slap Down AZ\u2019s Speech-Control Law"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Institute for Justice)<\/em> – Today (August 17, 2010), the Institute for Justice is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review and reverse a decision of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Arizona Freedom Club PAC v. Bennett, which upheld Arizona\u2019s unconstitutional \u201cmatching funds\u201d provision of the state\u2019s \u201cClean Elections\u201d law. <\/p>\n

A federal district court in Arizona had struck down the law in January as a violation of the First Amendment, but the Ninth Circuit reversed that decision this past May. In an unusual move, the U.S. Supreme Court in June prohibited Arizona from giving away matching funds to politicians during the 2010 elections. (A detailed backgrounder for journalists is available at: http:\/\/www.ij.org\/1228.)<\/p>\n

Arizona\u2019s \u201cClean Elections\u201d Act gives public money to politicians to run for office, but it does not stop there. It attempts to \u201clevel the playing field\u201d among candidates who take taxpayer money and candidates who choose to forego taxpayer dollars and raise their own funds for their campaigns, as well as the independent groups that support them. For every dollar a privately financed candidate or a group supporting that candidate spends above a certain amount, the government hands taxpayer dollars over to his opponent to allow him to \u201cmatch\u201d the spending\u2014and thus the speech\u2014of the privately funded candidate or groups supporting him. And the more these candidates or groups speak, the more their political and ideological opponents benefit.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Supreme Court must strike down this law because it allows the government to place its thumb on the scale in favor of politicians who receive government subsidies,\u201d said Bill Maurer, the lead attorney in a legal challenge to the Arizona law brought by the Institute for Justice. \u201cThe Ninth Circuit badly erred in upholding this unconstitutional system. We are asking the Supreme Court to once and for all stop the harm this system does to the free speech rights of privately financed candidates and independent groups that support them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMatching funds violate the First Amendment rights of candidates, citizens and independent groups,\u201d said Paul Avelar, staff attorney for the Institute\u2019s Arizona Chapter. \u201cThe government may not give a fundraising advantage to one candidate at the expense of his or her opponents. The point of the Clean Elections Act is to limit spending on speech\u2014and thus limit political speech\u2014and that is exactly what it does.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Ninth Circuit\u2019s decision was so inconsistent with protections for free speech in campaigns that since the decision came out on May 21, 2010, two federal appellate courts\u2014the Second Circuit and the Eleventh Circuit\u2014have refused to follow it. In those cases, these courts struck down matching funds systems in Connecticut and Florida.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe split among the federal appellate courts means that whether the government gets to \u2018level\u2019 your speech or not depends on what state you live in,\u201d continued Maurer. \u201cIt is precisely situations like these where the Supreme Court typically acts to create a uniform rule across the country.\u201d<\/p>\n

The issue of whether these kinds of matching funds systems are constitutional is one of national importance. In addition to Arizona, Maine also provides public financing and matching funds for all state offices. Eight other states provide public financing and matching funds for some state offices. Many more states have considered adding such a system. Moreover, the expansion of these systems is a top priority for well-funded, politically influential special interest groups who want more government involvement in elections. Such systems, which seek to replace America\u2019s traditional system of private support for politicians with a new system that is government directed and funded, are becoming more commonplace and proponents seek to make it the norm in all U.S. elections.<\/p>\n

Arizona\u2019s system suppresses political activity while providing none of the grandiose benefits promised by its proponents. Tim Keller, executive director of the IJ Arizona Chapter, noted, \u201cFor a decade, this Act has warped Arizona\u2019s politics and produced a system where our elections are more partisan and dirtier than ever. Half of Arizona\u2019s voters don\u2019t know the system exists and those who are aware of it, don\u2019t understand it. Rather than \u2018cleaning up\u2019 Arizona\u2019s elections, all the system has done is create complex rules to regulate political activity, suppress speech, and further distance politicians from the people they are supposed to represent.\u201d<\/p>\n

Public funding advocates often make bold claims about the benefits of these systems, but scientific evidence supporting these claims is scarce. David M. Primo, an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Rochester, recently compared the claims and promises made by public funding advocates with the actual evidence. He concluded that the evidence demonstrates that public funding programs have delivered few, if any, of the benefits promised by their promoters, and they have certainly not resulted in the fundamental transformation and rebirth of confidence in government the promoters sought. On the other hand, Primo found that the cost of such programs\u2014not only in terms of their negative effect on the timing and nature of political speech in the states with such programs, but also in terms of wasted public resources\u2014is demonstrable and real. In other words, public funding is a program that promises much, delivers little, and raises real constitutional and policy problems. Primo\u2019s research brief is available at: http:\/\/www.ij.org\/3466.<\/p>\n

The Institute for Justice\u2019s clients in the case\u2014Arizona Free Enterprise Club\u2019s Freedom Club PAC v. Bennett\u2014are two independent expenditure groups and two elected officials who prefer to run privately financed campaigns. Specifically, IJ represents the Arizona Free Enterprise Club\u2019s Freedom Club PAC, the Arizona Taxpayers Action Committee, Arizona State Treasurer Dean Martin, and Arizona State Representative Rick Murphy.<\/p>\n

Also filing a request for review of the Ninth Circuit\u2019s decision is the Goldwater Institute, which represents privately financed candidates challenging the law. IJ has requested that the Supreme Court accept both requests and consolidate its review in order to consider the full range of claims against the law in one proceeding.<\/p>\n

The Court is expected to act on the IJ\u2019s petition for review sometime during its fall session. <\/p>\n

The Institute for Justice defends First Amendment freedoms and challenges burdensome campaign finance laws nationwide. IJ recently won a landmark victory for free speech in federal court on behalf of SpeechNow.org, an independent group that opposes or supports candidates on the basis of their stand on free speech. IJ also won recent victories for free speech in Florida when a federal judge struck down the state\u2019s broadest-in-the-nation \u201celectioneering communications\u201d law and in Washington when it stopped an attempt to use the state\u2019s campaign finance laws to regulate talk-radio commentary about a ballot issue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Institute for Justice) – Today (August 17, 2010), the Institute for Justice is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review and reverse a decision of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Arizona Freedom Club PAC v. Bennett, which upheld Arizona\u2019s unconstitutional \u201cmatching funds\u201d provision of the state\u2019s \u201cClean Elections\u201d law. A federal district […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nevadanewsandviews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6200"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nevadanewsandviews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nevadanewsandviews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nevadanewsandviews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nevadanewsandviews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6200"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/nevadanewsandviews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6200\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6201,"href":"http:\/\/nevadanewsandviews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6200\/revisions\/6201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nevadanewsandviews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nevadanewsandviews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nevadanewsandviews.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}