The Commission’s Actions, in Dismissing Five Straw Donor Complaints, Were “Arbitrary, Capricious and An Abuse of Discretion and Otherwise Contrary to the Law”

WASHINGTON – The Campaign Legal Center and Democracy 21 filed a lawsuit Friday night in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia against the Federal Election Commission for dismissing five complaints that CLC and D21 filed with the agency. The dismissed complaints called for FEC investigation into donors who broke disclosure laws by hiding behind personal Limited Liability Companies (LLC) to anonymously make contributions to super PACs.

CLC and D21, over the course of several years, filed complaints with the FEC against these donors for violating the “straw donor” provision of Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA). These donors’ anonymous contributions ranged from $857,000 to over $12 million, and several of the donors openly admitted in the media that they had used their personal company for the purpose of hiding their identities from the public. Still, the FEC dismissed all five complaints, after the three Republican commissioners voted not to investigate and sanction these donors.   

“This clearly is an agency out of control,” said Larry Noble, general counsel for the Campaign Legal Center, who previously served as general counsel for the FEC. “The agency is now sanctioning the intentional undermining of the integrity of campaign finance disclosure.  Each time the FEC fails to pursue a serious violation of the law, it weakens our democracy and the ability of Americans to know who is truly influencing our elections. It also sends a loud and clear message that those who violate campaign finance laws will face no penalties.”

The Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized that disclosure laws play a vital role in providing the electorate with critical information to make informed choices. Prohibiting the use of straw donors to hide the true source of a contribution is essential to the law.

“LLCs are growing vehicles for laundering dark money contributions into federal elections. Anonymous donors are giving contributions to Super PACs through LLCs, and only the LLCs, not the actual donors, are being disclosed to the public by the Super PACs,” said Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21. “Our FEC complaints and lawsuit are designed to bring an end to these ‘secret money’ schemes before they get completely out of hand and to obtain enforcement of the law in cases that we believe involve clear violations.”

The lawsuit states that in dismissing these complaints, the FEC has “undermined FECA’s purposes, including its goal of promoting transparency in elections and providing the electorate with information about who is speaking to it during elections.” CLC and D21, along with the public, “were deprived of timely information about the sources of the contributions made to the super PACs – information to which they are legally entitled to under FECA.”

The lawsuit calls for the court to find that the FEC’s dismissal of the complaints was “arbitrary, capricious, and an abuse of discretion, and otherwise contrary to the law,” and seeks a judicial order demanding the FEC enforce the law within 30 days.

Read our complaint.

The Campaign Legal Center, Other Groups, Remind Speaker Ryan It’s Been One Year Since the Last OCE Co-Chair Stepped Down  

WASHINGTON – The Campaign Legal Center, joined by an unusual coalition of groups and congressional experts from across the political spectrum, today called on House Speaker Paul D. Ryan to appoint a new co-chair of the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) to replace former Rep. Goss (R-Fla.) who stepped down one year ago today. 

“Naming a replacement for Rep. Goss will send a much needed signal that the Speaker supports the OCE and that he is committed, as the institutional leader of the House of Representatives, to continuing the Office of Congressional Ethics in the next Congress,” said Meredith McGehee, policy director of the Campaign Legal Center. “The OCE is essential to ensuring public credibility in Congress. The House Ethics Committee, through inaction or tortured interpretations of ethics rules and standards, continues to demonstrate how important it is to have OCE’s independent voice in the congressional ethics process.”

Signing the letter are: the Campaign Legal Center, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, Common Cause, Demand Progress, Democracy 21, Issue One, Judicial Watch, National Legal and Policy Center, National Taxpayers Union, Norm Ornstein, Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) and Public Citizen.

The OCE was created in response to a serious loss of public credibility in the ability of Congress to enforce its own ethics rules and standards.  The investigations undertaken by the congressional ethics committees were often perceived by the public as whitewashes.  Further, partisanship within the House Ethics Committee’s ranks had left it unable to conduct Committee business in a fair and impartial manner.

Read the letter.

State rightfully complied with the Voting Rights Act, and did not engage in a partisan gerrymander

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Supreme Court today unanimously held the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission did not engage in a partisan gerrymander, but instead drew its legislative map to comply with the Voting Rights Act (VRA). The decision is a huge victory for voting rights.

“The high court has preserved the rights of minorities to elect candidates of their choice under existing plans,” said Gerry Hebert, executive director of the Campaign Legal Center. “Denying Arizona the ability to have considered the VRA’s guidance in drawing districts before Shelby County v. Holder was decided would have disrupted thousands of other plans that have previously considered the VRA in the drawing of their maps.”

Since Arizona drew its map in 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court gutted a key provision of the VRA, potentially allowing many jurisdictions across the country to implement racially discriminatory redistricting maps in the 2020 cycle if Congress does not act to restore the VRA.

Campaign Legal Center submitted a friend-of-the-court brief in Harris v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission, in support of Arizona’s ability to consider complying with the VRA in drawing its maps. 

The Voting Rights Institute today called on the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate Daphne, Alabama’s City Council’s March 21 decision to reduce the number of polling places in the city from five to two. The city’s decision forces residents of one of the only districts with a sizable black population to travel more than two and a half miles away from their current polling place, while preserving the polling locations for most of the city’s heavily white districts.

“This is exactly the type of voting change that would have had to have been precleared by the Department of Justice before the Supreme Court’s disastrous ruling in Shelby County v. Holder,” said Harry Baumgarten, Legal Fellow with the Voting Rights Institute. “In gutting a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, the Supreme Court has opened the door for these potentially discriminatory measures to be passed and implemented throughout the country.” 

The Voting Rights Institute, a project of the American Constitution Society, Campaign Legal Center and Georgetown University Law Center, sent the letter to the Department of Justice after receiving a complaint from African-American leader and voter in Daphne, Willie Williams. In addition to reducing the number of polling locations, the city also recently passed a new mid-decade redistricting plan whose impact on the black voting age population in each district is at best unclear because the city has not been forthcoming about the racial impact of its new plan.

 “We want fair and honest elections, and what the Daphne City Council has done in reducing polling locations is not fair and it’s not honest,” said Willie Williams, Daphne resident. “Voters need convenient polling places and need to be able to vote, and not be confused where to go to vote in their local elections.”

Read our letter.

The Voting Rights Institute protects one of the most precious rights held by Americans — the right to vote. Established in response to the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder, which invalidated a key provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the Voting Rights Institute is training the next generation of attorneys, experts and activists to preserve our democracy and protect the ability of all Americans to vote.

Whitford v. Nichol Partisan Gerrymandering Case to Go to Trial

A Wisconsin district court ruled today that 12 regular Wisconsin voters, represented by the Campaign Legal Center, can have their day in court to challenge the state’s 2012 partisan gerrymander, which unconstitutionally drew district lines in a way that would keep Republican control of the state’s legislature.

“The Campaign Legal Center is proud to serve as co-counsel to Wisconsin residents and Democratic voters who are challenging one of the worst partisan gerrymanders in modern American history,” said Gerry Hebert, executive director of the Campaign Legal Center. “The plaintiffs look forward to presenting evidence at trial showing that the plan was drawn in secret, in consultation with a political scientist and without any input from Democrats, in an attempt to maximize Republican wins and minimize Democratic influence over the political process for as long as the plan was in place.”

Though the U.S. Supreme Court has made clear that excessive partisan gerrymandering is unconstitutional and can be addressed by the courts, the Supreme Court has yet to develop a judicially manageable standard for courts to use in deciding these cases. 

“In denying Wisconsin’s motion for summary judgment and setting the case for trial next month, the three-judge court  has left it to us to develop a workable standard that reflects a voter’s right to fair and effective representation, and that’s exactly what we plan to do,” said Ruth Greenwood, senior redistricting counsel for the Campaign Legal Center. 

Read the order and opinion.