Yesterday the Institute for Justice won
two First Amendment victories in cases that illustrate how
campaign finance regulations, ostensibly aimed at preventing
wealthy special interests from buying access to the levers of
government power, end up squelching the voices of grassroots groups
and amateur activists.

One
decision involved Mississippi regulations that apply to anyone
who spends $200 or more on speech related to inititiatives aimed at
amending the state constitution. The case was brought by Vance
Justice and four other Oxford residents who wanted to make the case
for Initiative 31, an eminent domain reform inititative, but
discovered that merely buying a quarter-page ad in the local
newspaper would require them to register as a “political
committee.” The rules for political committees are so complicated,
U.S. District Judge Sharion Aycock observes, that “a prudent person
might have extraordinary difficulty merely determining what is
required.” Aycock adds that “potential speakers might well require
legal counsel to determine which regulations even apply, above and
beyond how to comport with those requirements.” She concludes that
the public interest in keeping tabs on groups like Justice and his
friends cannot justify this regulatory burden.

“We just wanted to inform our neighbors about Initiative 31 and
government abuse of eminent domain—an important issue that affects
everybody,” Justice says in an I.J.
press release. “Instead, we wound up learning a lesson in how
campaign finance laws chill free speech—also an important issue
that affects everybody. We are all thankful that Judge Aycock
looked at the real-world effects of these laws and protected our
constitutional rights.”

The
other decision involved Arizona regulations that ensnared
Dina Galassini, a Fountain Hills resident who tried to organize a
small protest against a local bond issue by sending letters to a
couple dozen friends and neighbors, inviting them to show up with
homemade signs. As U.S. District Judge James Teilborg puts
it, “She was about to feel the heavy hand of government
regulation in a way she never imagined.” Galassini soon received a
letter from the town clerk, who warned her she had better stop
exercising her First Amendment rights until she had registered with
the government as a political committee. “I was stunned to learn
that I needed to register with the government just to talk to
people in my community about a political issue,”
says Galassini. ” All I could think was, ‘How can this be
allowed under the First Amendment?'” 

Teilborg wondered the same thing, ultimately concluding that it
could not. “It is not clear that even a campaign finance attorney
would be able to ascertain how to interpret the definition of
‘political committee,'” he observed, deeming it unconstitutionally
vague because “people of common intelligence must guess at the
law’s meaning and will differ as to its application.” Even if the
state’s interpretation were accepted, Teilborg added, it would be
overbroad “because it sweeps in a substantial amount of
constitutionally protected speech without any sufficiently
important governmental interest in regulating such speech.” He
explained the impact that such regulations have on groups of modest
means:

Under this statutory scheme, any time two or more people want to
engage in core political speech to influence the results of an
election, they will be chilled from doing so because Arizona’s
definition of political committee is vague and because the
regulations imposed on small groups that seek to combine to
influence the results of an election are not substantially
related to the State’s disclosure interest….

The practical effect of such regulations for small groups makes
engaging in protected speech a “severely demanding task.”

Both of these cases raise issues similar to those posed by
Worley v.
Florida Secretary of State, which the Institute for
Justice has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to consider. Florida’s law
transforms people into political committees once they spend $500 to
advocate passage or defeat of a ballot initiative. “If the Supreme
Court takes the case,” I.J.
says, “it could set nationwide precedent protecting the rights
of ordinary Americans to speak without having to comply with
burdensome campaign finance laws.”