The Campaign Legal Center and Public Citizen today announced plans to file suit against the Federal Election Commission (FEC) for its dismissal of a complaint against Crossroads GPS. The complaint stemmed from the group’s failure to register as a political committee and disclose its donors despite huge expenditures on political advertising in the 2010 election cycle.
Public Citizen, ProtectOurDemocracy.org and others filed a complaint with the FEC in October 2010 alleging that the group’s campaign expenditures and organizational objectives made it a political committee that must disclose its donors under federal campaign laws. Despite the strong case made by the FEC’s General Counsel that the 501(c)(4) group violated federal law, the Commission deadlocked along party lines over whether to investigate further, preventing any action. While the Democratic commissioners agreed there was enough evidence to proceed, the three Republican commissioners voted against looking into the case further.
The suit will argue that the FEC’s dismissal of the case following the 3-3 deadlock was arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion and contrary to the law.