Yesterday, I predicted that Jim Bopp would file in the Supreme Court an appeal of the denial of the preliminary injunction in the Citizens United case. Today I received a press release confirming this is now the case:

Citizens United appealed today to the United States Supreme Court the U.S. District Court’s ruling yesterday in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the latest challenge to the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law.
A three-judge panel ruled yesterday that Citizens United cannot run ads for its new documentary film, Hillary The Movie, without disclosing the film’s financiers or including a disclaimer about who produced the ads. The ads can be seen at www.hillarythemovie.com.
At issue is a section of the 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act that imposes a blackout period before elections on television advertisements that meet the law’s definition of “electioneering communications.” Last year, the Supreme Court held, in FEC v. Wisconsin Right to Life, that genuine issue ads could not be prohibited during the blackout periods, but the FEC has insisted that such ads must still contain a political disclaimer and be the subject of FEC reports which require disclose of contributors to the group running the ads. Citizens United challenged these disclosure provisions, arguing that since the ads are genuine issue ads, they cannot be subject to any regulation. Yesterday, the D.C. district court held that only the Supreme Court could decide whether the ads should still be subject to the disclosure provisions.
Citizens United filed their appeal to the United States Supreme Court today. “The ruling left the door open to appeal to the Supreme Court as the three judge panel felt constrained by conflicting Supreme Court precedent,” said David Bossie, president of Citizens United. “We don’t want our donors to be victims of the harassment by Clinton supporters when all we are doing is advertising a documentary.”
According to James Bopp, Jr., attorney for Citizens United, “We will be asking the Supreme Court to decide the case expeditiously, and we believe that the Court could hear and decide this case by June.”
Hillary The Movie is a 90-minute documentary on Hillary Clinton’s record, drawing from nearly 40 interviews with individuals and opinion makers who personally locked horns with the Clintons. The film features interviews with former Clinton adviser Dick Morris, columnist John Fund, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, and many others.
The movie is being sold on DVD and is scheduled for nine screenings in theaters.

A few quick reactions. First, it is not clear to me whether there will be an application for some kind of emergency relief here, or whether Citizens United will be seeking only expedited consideration of its appeal. Second, it is not clear to me whether or not Citizens United will be appealing that part of the ruling barring the use of corporate funds to pay for this movie on television, or whether this is only an appeal on the disclosure issues. Third, though the Citizens United official mentions fear of “harassment,” that was not the basis of the claim for an exemption from the disclosure provisions made in the lower court (and subject to the test set forth in Brown v. Socialist Workers Party). Instead, the claim in the lower court was that there need be no disclosure of any funders of electioneering communications if they fall into the WRTL exemption (which allows using corporate and union treasury funds to pay for such communications in some circumstances). A ruling exempting ECs from disclosure any time they could get the WRTL exemption would be troubling indeed, for reasons Richard Briffault and I gave to the FEC. Finally, I presume the FEC can fight this appeal through the SG’s office, despite the fact that the FEC lacks a quorum to make certain decisions on litigation.