…o low. (I helped defend San Diego’s limits against such a challenge in the Thalheimer litigation.) What is perhaps more surprising is that newly appointed judge James Ho, joined by Judge Edith Jones, issued a blistering dissent from the denial of rehearing en banc, essentially adopting Justice Thomas’s extreme position that all campaign contribution limits are unconstitutional, and offering challengers what the judge considers to be a more success…
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…The LAT has a great story, Follow the Money: It’s Not So Easy. It talks about the difficulty of preventing corruption, providing information to voters, and enforcing the individual contribution limits when entities are also allowed to directly contribute to candidates. It compares L.A.’s experience to San Diego’s, which has such limits (limits which I successfully helped to defend in the Thalheimer litigation)….
Continue reading…issued a temporary injunction Friday, knocking out Houston’s fundraising blackout rule which prevents city candidates from raising money before Feb. 1 of an election year. You can find the 42-page ruling issuing a preliminary injunction at this link. It distinguishes the Thalheimer case, in which the court upheld a time limit under the City of San Diego’s laws. (I was one of the lawyers representing the City of San Diego in the litigation). It do…
Continue reading…es). I successfully defended San Diego’s corporate contribution ban in the Thalheimer case before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. All of the other circuit courts reached the same conclusion: that the corporate contribution limit stands under earlier Supreme Court authority. Danielczyk case the only case to reach a contrary conclusion in the district court, but was reversed by the 4th Circuit to bring it in line with the other circuits. Although…
Continue reading…Missoulian: “The Montana Republican Party donated $500,000 to gubernatorial candidate Rick Hill and approximately $30,000 to attorney general candidate Tim Fox after a judge struck down the state’s campaign contribution limits.” More here. We saw a similar move in the Thalheimer case when San Diego’s limits were temporarily blocked….
Continue reading…an, for three reasons. First, there is no opinion of the Court in Randall. Thalheimer v. City of San Diego, 645 F.3d 1109, 1127 n.5 (9th Cir. 2011) (“[T]he plurality opinion [in Randall] [i]s persuasive authority, though not a binding precedent.” (internal quotation marks omitted)). Second, even if we thought that Justice Breyer’s plurality opinion represented the narrowest view of a majority of the Court, it did not depart from the principles of…
Continue reading…n of the district court decision in Danielczyk) and Ninth Circuits (in the Thalheimer case in which I was involved) in holding that any challenge to corporate contribution bans in the lower courts is barred by the Supreme Court’s decision in FEC v. Beaumont. The 8th Circuit does drop a footnote however suggesting that if and when this issue reaches the Supreme Court again, the Court could well overrule Beaumont. (Without a circuit split, however,…
Continue reading…ng) sufficient to render an independent-expenditure entity distinct from a related entity making contributions, distinguishing the DC Circuit’s opinion in Emily’s List (and, perhaps, the Thalheimer litigation that Rick is working on in San Diego). The case is Vermont Right to Life Committee v. Sorrell (II), No. 2:09-cv-188 (D. Vt.)….
Continue readingThe time to appeal has passed in the litigation over challenges to a number of City of San Diego campaign finance laws. [Disclosure: I am one of the lawyers for the City of San Diego.] The case went to the Ninth Circuit at the preliminary injunction stage but there was no appeal after the district court decided the cross-motions for summary judgment. Among other things, the Ninth Circuit held at the preliminary injunction stage that a ban on non-…
Continue reading…n Citizens United, it should overturn the corporate direct contributions ban. Jason was an excellent research assistant of mine. I did not advise him on this note, however, as the very issue of this note was pending in the Thalheimer litigation from San Diego at the time he worked on it. (I am one of the attorneys for the City of San Diego in that litigation.) I very much look forward to reading it, and congratulate him on the publication….
Continue reading…also does not disturb the validity of the anti-circumvention interest. See Thalheimer v. City of San Diego, Nos. 10-55322, 10-55324, 10-55434, 2011 WL 2400779, at *13 (9th Cir. Jun. 9, 2011) (concluding that ‘nothing in the explicit holdings or broad reasoning’ of Citizens United invalidates the anti-circumvention interest in the context of contribution limits)”) In the end, it will be up to the Supreme Court to weigh in in both the Montana case a…
Continue reading…From Gil Cabrera of the San Diego Ethics Commission and T.J. Zane of the Lincoln Club. [Disclosure: I am one of the attorneys for the City of San Diego in this litigation.]…
Continue reading…contributing money directly to candidates for City office. The opinion in Thalheimer v. City of San Diego is here.[Disclosure: I am one of the attorneys for the City of San Diego.] In addition to upholding the ban on corporate/non-human contributions directly to candidates, the Court also rejected a challenge to San Diego’s $500 individual contribution limit to City candidates, as well as a ban on contributions to City candidate more than 12 mont…
Continue reading…Viveca Novak has written this must-read profile of Jim Bopp for the American Prospect. Viveca, a former Time correspondent who I got to know during Florida 2000, has recently taken up the position as Editorial and Communications Director for the Center for Responsive Politics. I’ll be going up against Citizen Bopp in federal district court in San Diego Friday in the Thalheimer challenge to the City of San Diego’s campaign finance laws….
Continue reading…gue for the City of San Diego on cross-motions for summary judgment in the Thalheimer campaign finance case). The year ahead will be a busy one for election law, and especially for me beginning in the summer with the publication of The Voting Wars by Yale University Press. I hope to do a mini-book tour in the fall talking about these issues before Election Day. Also, save the date of September 14, 2012 for an exciting conference, F oxes, Henhouses…
Continue reading…one’s protected expression indicate the intensity of one’s political beliefs. These values, moreover, have not gone unrecognized in underlying First Amendment jurisprudence. [Disclosure: I am litigating similar issues in the Thalheimer case (quoted by the 2d Circuit above) against the same lawyers representing the challengers in this litigation. The Thalheimer case is back before the federal district court on cross-motions for summary judgment.]…
Continue reading…Dick Semerdjian and I (representing the City of San Diego in the Thalheimer litigation) have written this letter to the editor of the San Diego Union-Tribune. The case is currently subject to cross-motions for summary judgment in federal district court….
Continue reading…it split), it would provide a strong basis for upholding the corporate contribution ban in the Danielczyk case. (Disclosure: I am one of the lawyers representing the City of San Diego in the Thalheimer case, cited in Preston, considering the constitutionality of the City’s ban on corporate and other non-human entity contributions to candidates.)…
Continue reading…Read the complaint here. (Some aspects are similar to the suit filed in the Thalheimer case, in which Bopp is on one side and I am one of the lawyers representing the City of San Diego on the other.) More in this story….
Continue reading…-07-2011/688/. It would seem to m that the attack on a ban on contributions to corporations would be tough given the Ninth Circuit’s recent ruling in the Thalheimer case. [Disclosure: I am one of the lawyers for San Diego in that case.]…
Continue readingIn Thalheimer v. City of San Diego, the Ninth Circuit upheld the trial court’s denial of a preliminary injunction of the City’s law barring non-human contributions to candidates (the same issue as in the Danielczyk case in the 4th Circuit and the Swanson case in the 8th circuit). The court also denied a preliminary injunction as to time limitations for candidates raising campaign contributions. The Ninth Circuit also denied rehearing en banc. Tod…
Continue readingBig news from the Ninth Circuit. The full court has denied rehearing en banc in this campaign finance case. According to the order, no active judge on the court requested a vote in the case. Among other things, the panel opinion held that a ban on non-human (e.g, corporate or union) direct contributions to candidates does not violate the First Amendment. The court also held that a temporal limitation on campaign contributions (no contributions mo…
Continue reading…You can read it here. You can find my earlier coverage of this case here. [Disclosure: I am one of the attorneys for the City of San Diego.] Under the rules, no response to the petition may be filed unless the court asks for a response….
Continue reading…ota’s rules governing corporate independent expenditures, and whether the rules run afoul of Citizens United. I was very happy to see this opinion, as I have the same issue pending in the Ninth Circuit in the Thalheimer case, where I am one of the attorneys defending the City of San Diego’s campaign contribution laws. The Thalheimer case was argued in the Ninth Circuit at the beginning of October….
Continue reading…That’s the lead press release at the moment at the James Madison Center. Note that this is a suit against the county of San Diego. Jim Bopp and I are on opposite sides of a lawsuit raising similar issues involving the city of San Diego. That case, the Thalheimer case, is currently pending before the Ninth Circuit….
Continue reading…n May. (Judge Wardlaw is the author of the opinion. She’s also the author of the Long Beach case striking down Long Beach’s law limiting contributions to independent expenditure committees, and she’s one of the judges on the Ninth Circuit panel deciding the Thalheimer challenge to the San Diego campaign finance law—Jim and I argued on opposite sides of that case last week. Coincidentally, Judge Fletcher, who is also on the Thalheimer panel, was on…
Continue reading…You can find the audio of yesterday’s argument in Thalheimer v. City of San Diego here….
Continue reading…The opinion in MCCL v. Swanson is here. Plaintiffs, represented by Jim Bopp, have already appealed. I will be arguing against Jim on a similar issue before the Ninth Circuit in the Thalheimer case on October 4….
Continue reading…Michigan has apparently entered into a consent decree permitting corporate contributions to independent expenditure committees, converting this preliminary injunction into a permanent one. This comes on the heels of Thalheimer v. City of San Diego and the FEC’s Commonsense 10 Advisory Opinion, confronting the same issue at the city and federal level, respectively….
Continue readingThe San Diego campaign finance case, Thalheimer v. City of San Diego, will be heard by the Ninth Circuit in Pasadena on October 4. I plan to argue on behalf of the City of San Diego. One of the questions posed in the case is the constitutionality of San Diego law barring corporations, unions, and other non-human entities from contributing directly to candidates for City office. Also at issue is whether political parties have a constitutional righ…
Continue reading…Following up on this post, I have posted at this link the Plaintiffs’ first brief in the San Diego Thalheimer case. (Jim Bopp is the lead lawyer for the plaintiffs). Among other arguments, the plaintiffs argue that corporations and other non-individual entities have a constitutional right to make campaign contributions directly to candidates. [Disclosure: I am co-counsel for the City of San Diego in this matter.]…
Continue readingToday co-counsel and I filed this brief in the 9th Circuit, arguing against a district court order (1) preliminarily enjoining the City’s law barring individual (>$500) and non-individual (i.e., corporate, union, etc.) contributions to independent expenditure committees and (2) preliminarily enjoining, as to political parties, a ban on organizational direct contributions to candidates. Plaintiffs have cross-appealed, so there will be additional i…
Continue reading…not a friend of mine; indeed we are on the opposite sides of the San Diego/Thalheimer case right now. But here what I wrote when Bopp was replaced by Olson in the Citizens United case: “The Citizens United case was Bopp’s brain child, one of the suits he devised to push the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence in a further deregulatory direction. This is a curious choice for Citizens United. In any case, I wonder if the RNC will consider a similar move w…
Continue reading…the preliminary injunction decision (and clarification of decision) in the Thalheimer v. City of San Diego campaign finance case. (I am co-counsel for the City in this case.) As I noted, the Court issued a split decision on Plaintiffs’ challenges. The City has now appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit from parts of the adverse portions of these orders. In particular, the City is appealing from the orders preliminaril…
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