11th Circuit finds Younger abstention applies to Georgia campaign finance dispute

From New Georgia Project, Inc. v. Attorney General, an opinion by Judge Newsom, joined by Judges Rosenbaum and Marcus (some light revisions):

In this appeal from the grant of a preliminary injunction, we are asked to decide whether two Georgia campaign-finance statutes violate the First Amendment and, as a threshold matter, whether the district court should have abstained from exercising its jurisdiction under Younger v. Harris, 401 U.S. 37 (1971).

After careful review, and with the benefit of oral argument, we hold that Younger and its progeny required the district court to abstain and that the court therefore erred in issuing injunctive relief. Accordingly, we needn’t reach the merits of the First Amendment challenge. . . .

The Georgia Government Transparency and Campaign Finance Act requires individuals and entities that spend more than a specified amount on express advocacy in favor of or in opposition to a particular candidate or ballot measure to disclose those expenditures and their sources. . . .

New Georgia never registered with the Commission, nor did it did file disclosure reports during the 2018 or 2019 campaign seasons. . . .

Based on information discovered through the subpoenas, a staff attorney filed an amended complaint with the Commission. It alleged that New Georgia had violated the Act by failing to disclose more than $4.2 million in contributions and $3.2 million in expenditures during the 2018 primary, general, and run-off elections. It also alleged that New Georgia had violated the Act by failing to disclose $646,422 in contributions and $173,643 in expenditures to support a transit-related ballot initiative. The Commission notified New Georgia that it would hold a preliminary hearing at which it could contest the charges.

The following chronology is important: The preliminary hearing before the Commission occurred on August 1, 2022. Three days later, on August 4, the Commission issued an order finding “reasonable grounds” to conclude that New Georgia had violated the Act and referring the case to the Georgia Attorney General’s office for further proceedings.

About four weeks later, on August 31, New Georgia filed a civil-rights action in federal district court against the Georgia Attorney General and the members of the Commission—collectively, “the state”—claiming that the Act violated the First and Fourteenth Amendments, both on its face and as applied. . . .

Meanwhile, back in the state proceeding, about two weeks later, on September 21, the Georgia Attorney General formally transferring the enforcement action to the Office of State Administrative Hearings (“OSAH”) for an evidentiary hearing. . . .

Before us, the state contends, as a threshold matter, that the district court abused its discretion in declining to abstain under Younger from exercising its jurisdiction to issue injunctive relief. . . .

For better or worse, the Supreme Court has since broadened Younger’s reach in two significant ways, both of which bear directly on this case. First, it has extended Younger beyond criminal prose cutions to apply to state civil-enforcement proceedings. Initially, in Huffman v. Pursue, Ltd., the Court held that the policies underlying Younger—and thus its anti-injunction policy—apply to state-brought civil actions that are “akin to . . . criminal prosecution[s]” and “in aid of and closely related to criminal statutes.” Then, in Trainor v. Hernandez, the Court took the next step, holding that “the principles of Younger and Huffman are broad enough to apply” to all state-filed civil-enforcement proceedings “brought to vindicate important state policies,” even those that cannot fairly be characterized as “quasi-criminal.”

No one seems to dispute that the state campaign-finance proceeding at issue here qualifies as the type of civil-enforcement action to which Younger abstention can apply. To determine whether Younger’s rule actually applies, we look to the factors that the Supreme Court outlined in Middlesex County Ethics Committee v. Garden State Bar Association—namely, (1) whether there is an “on-going state judicial proceeding”; (2) whether the state proceeding “implicate[s] important state interests”; and (3) whether there is “an adequate opportunity in the state proceeding[] to raise constitutional challenges.”

All here seem to agree, and we have no reason to doubt, that the second and third Middlesex factors are satisfied, so we turn to the first: Was the state campaign-finance proceeding here “ongoing” in the relevant sense? . . .

. . .the state had been investigating New Georgia for years and recommended enforcement weeks before New Georgia filed its federal suit. The evidence here gives rise to no compelling inference that the state was strategically seeking to evade federal-court jurisdiction; rather, the state seems simply to have been pursuing its enforcement action in the normal course, from investigation to prosecution.

Judge Rosenbaum concurred separately, concerned about how far Younger has extended.

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