Two federal court decisions handed down in the last week of April have significantly strengthened the constitutional protection of political speech during election campaigns.
The first decision came in the case of North Carolina Right to Life v. Bartlett, where the federal District Court for the Western District of North Carolina ruled that three provisions of North Carolina's campaign finance statute were unconstitutional. This decision represents an important victory for pro-life groups which spend money during the time of election campaigns to get their message out to the electorate.
The court first invalidated the statutory definition of "political committee." Under the statute, a political committee is required to comply with detailed registration, recordkeeping, and disclosure requirements. Because those requirements are so burdensome, they may only be imposed on true political committees - - groups whose major purpose is to influence the outcome of elections directly.
The North Carolina statute, however, attempted to impose those burdens on groups which do nothing more than communicate their positions on issues. Therefore, the court held the statute unconstitutional because it infringed on "issue advocacy," speech which is inviolate under the 1976 Supreme Court case of Buckley v. Valeo.
The second provision invalidated in the North Carolina case limited "independent expenditures" by corporations for any political purpose whatsoever. "Independent expenditures" are communications which use explicit words to advocate the election or defeat of a candidate and which are not "coordinated" with a candidate. In Federal Election Commission v. Massachusetts Citizens for Life (1986), the Supreme Court held that certain nonprofit corporations which were structured so as not to " corrupt" the political system must be allowed to make independent expenditures. Looking to the Massachusetts Citizens for Life case, the federal court found that the North Carolina statute was invalid because it limited expenditures by all nonprofit corporations, not merely those which posed a threat of corruption.
Finally, the court in North Carolina held unconstitutional a provision which prohibited candidates from soliciting or accepting contributions from lobbyists during a legislative session. The court held that this restriction is unconstitutional because it would have a severe impact on candidates' ability to amass the resources necessary to run an effective campaign.
In the second case, Kruse v. City of Cincinnati, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit struck down an ordinance passed by the Cincinnati City Council which restricted the amount of money that could be spent by candidates running for a seat on the council.
Several former candidates for the Cincinnati City Council challenged the regulation as unconstitutional. Their challenge was based on the fundamental principle that spending money on one's own speech must be permitted. Since a governmentally imposed limit on the amount of money a campaign could spend would reduces the quantity of expression during an election, they argued, the limit violated the First Amendment. Therefore, the court stated that it could be upheld only if the city presented a "compelling" governmental interest which justified the monetary restriction.
However, the city did not offer any justifications for the spending limit that the court found to be compelling. Rather, it attempted to justify the restriction primarily by claiming that it was necessary to "level the playing field" among candidates, or to curb the general increase in campaign spending.
The Court of Appeals for the Sixth District held that those interests were insufficient to support a limit on campaign spending. As the Supreme Court had held in the Buckley case, the threat of corruption in the political system (that is, the exchange of money for political favors) is the only interest which justifies monetary limits on spending in campaigns. Since the city could not demonstrate that the expenditure limit would stem corruption, the appeals court held that the ordinance was unconstitutional.
These two decisions are very significant because they reaffirm the importance of free speech in a democracy, a principle which is crucial to the success of the pro-life movement.