Tenth Circuit Issues Post-CU Opinion Reading Narrowly New Mexico’s “Major Purpose” Test for Political Committees

The opinion in New Mexico Youth Organized v. Herrera is here. From a James Madison Center press release (I cannot find a link on their website): “The Tenth Circuit’s holding is significant, because it limits government’s ability to regulate organizations as full-fledged political committees, thereby imposing on them all the burdens – – including registration, extensive recordkeeping requirements, and extensive reporting requirements – – that go along with being a political committee. As the Supreme Court has explained, these burdens are so onerous that many organizations, rather than complying with them, will just forego their political speech. This is at odds with the Supreme Court’s repeated holdings that political speech is at the very core of what the First Amendment protects.”

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