Today, the Campaign Legal Center filed an amici brief to defend the constitutionality of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder on behalf of several jurisdictions that have bailed out under the Act by demonstrating a record of non-discrimination.

Under the challenged provisions, certain “covered” states and localities, predominantly in the South, must obtain Justice Department approval, or “preclearance,” before changing any election practice or procedure, such as moving polling locations or altering voting districts. However, if those jurisdictions can demonstrate that they have had a clean record of voting practices over a ten-year period and have taken additional steps to ensure non-discriminatory elections, they are permitted to “bail out” of this preclearance requirement.

The amici brief refutes a string of inaccuracies put forth by the petitioner, Shelby County, Alabama, regarding the burdens of the bailout process. The amici curiae Washington County, VA, the General Registrar of Voters of Essex County, VA and the City of Kings Mountain, NC explain that the bailout process to terminate coverage is financially feasible, and neither cumbersome nor complicated.  The brief further highlights that Shelby County itself would apparently not qualify for a bailout due to a past violation of the Voting Rights Act by a city within the county.

“The covered jurisdictions from Virginia and North Carolina speak from experience in stating that the bailout provisions are neither onerous nor cost-prohibitive despite the claims of Shelby County,” said Tara Malloy, Campaign Legal Center Senior Counsel. “Beyond the exaggerated claims of the hardships of the bailout process, the violations of the Voting Rights Act committed by the City of Calera in Shelby County are exactly the type of actions these provisions within the Act are designed to prevent in order to protect minority voters.”

The Legal Center’s brief also chronicles the history of the “bailout” provisions, arguing that bailout serves to tailor the coverage of Section 5 and ensures that the preclearance requirement is a valid exercise of Congress’s authority under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.

“The bailout mechanism updates the geographic scope of the special provisions on an ongoing basis, and provides further assurances that Section 5 is a congruent and proportional means to ensure our elections are free of discrimination.” said Ms. Malloy.

Oral argument before the Supreme Court is scheduled for February 27.

To read the brief, click here.

The Campaign Legal Center today joined with ten reform groups to urge newly installed House Administration Committee Chair Rep. Candice Miller (R-MI) to hold hearings early in the 113th Congress to examine potential legislative solutions to repair the a campaign finance system run amok in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision. The letter emphasized the broad public support for repairing the damage done to our democratic process by big donors and secret contributions.

Hearings were urged to discuss the myriad abuses of the current system in the 2012 elections that saw an explosion of outside money including hundreds of millions of dollars laundered through shell corporations and opaque tax-exempt organization leaving open the question of whether foreign funds might have been used to influence our elections. Further the letter urged hearings on proposed legislation to expand donor disclosure and bills designed enhance the role of small donors

The full text of the letter follows below. 

Public Campaign * Americans for Campaign Reform * Campaign Legal Center * Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) * Common Cause * Democracy 21 * Democracy Matters * Demos * Public Citizen * Rootstrikers * U.S. Public Interest Research Group (PIRG)

The Honorable Candice Miller, Chairwoman
Committee on House Administration
1309 Longworth House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515

January 30, 2013

Dear Chairwoman Miller:

As the chair of the Committee on House Administration, we want to congratulate you on your new role and look forward to working with you and your staff.

In the first presidential election cycle since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, an estimated $6 billion was spent, with more than $1 billion coming from non‐party outside groups. By some accounts, approximately 31 percent of outside spending was funded by “secret” undisclosed donors.

We are writing to request that you hold hearings early in the 113th Congress on the Citizens United decision to examine potential legislative solutions to a system out of control, including consideration of disclosure reforms. According to a Greenberg Quinlan Rosner poll, nearly two‐thirds of 2012 voters (including 71 percent of Democrats, 67 percent of Independents, and 54 percent of Republicans) said that big donors and secret money undermined democracy in this election.

There are a number of questions that your Committee should examine in light of the 2012 elections. These include: Was any of that undisclosed money spent by special interests trying to get favorable treatment for pending legislation before Congress? Did “shell” organizations form just to spend money in elections and then disband immediately afterward to try to hide information from voters? Did foreign corporations that are hostile to U.S. interests spend money trying to influence public policy?

The hearings should also address the proliferation of political spending by ultrawealthy individuals and special interest‐backed super PACs. Nearly 60 percent of super PAC funding came from just 159 donors contributing at least $1 million, according to a Demos‐US PIRG report. In House races, just 0.14 percent of Americans made itemized contributions to congressional candidates. Various proposals (the Grassroots Democracy Act, Fair Elections Now Act, and Empowering Citizens Act) that would enhance the role of small donors should be analyzed to ensure that we have “government of the many, not of the money.”

For our democracy to flourish, we must find new, meaningful ways for average citizens to have a stronger voice in the process, and citizens have a right – and a need – to know who is spending money to influence the outcome of our elections.

Thank you for your consideration. Please feel free to contact Aaron Scherb ([email protected] or 202‐736‐5726) with any questions, and we look forward to your response.

Sincerely,
 
Nick Nyhart
President and CEO
Public Campaign
 
Meredith McGehee
Policy Director
Campaign Legal Center
 
Lisa Gilbert
Director, Congress Watch
Public Citizen
 
Joan Mandle
Executive Director
Democracy Matters
 
Lawrence Noble
President and CEO
Americans for Campaign Reform
 
Adam Lioz
Counsel
Demos
 
Blair Bowie
Democracy Advocate
U.S. Public Interest Research Group
 
Fred Wertheimer
President
Democracy 21
 
Karen Hobert Flynn
Senior Vice President for Strategy and Programs
Common Cause
 
Lawrence Lessig
Founder
Rootstrikers
 
Melanie Sloan
Executive Director
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington
 
cc: Ranking Member Congressman Robert Brady

The Campaign Legal Center today joined Democracy 21 in urging the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to investigate whether American Tradition Partnership (formerly Western Tradition Partnership) submitted false information to the agency in order to obtain its 501(c)(4) tax-exempt status. Copies of the organization’s application materials published by ProPublica and Frontline indicate that the group made numerous false claims while seeking expedited review of its application for exempt status.

In its original application, then Western Tradition Partnership told the IRS that it would not participate or intervene in elections which it subsequently did. Further the group sought and received expedited review and approval of its application for501(c)(4) status by claiming that an individual had pledged $300,000 to the group only if it were granted exempt status by a certain date. In interviews after the IRS documents were published, the supposed donor (Jacob Jabs) reportedly told the media that he never pledged funds to the group and had never even spoken to representatives of the organization until after being identified in stories as the individual who had pledged funds, when he called the group to complain.

“The IRS needs to investigate the matter thoroughly and if it can verify the media reports, the agency must revoke the group’s exempt status and the Department of Justice should prosecute the violations to the full extent of the law,” said J. Gerald Hebert, Legal Center Executive Director. “If these allegations prove true and American Tradition Partnership is not prosecuted, then there would be little to prevent other one-cycle political committees from posing as social welfare organizations in order to launder money for wealthy secret interests seeking to sway our elections.”

To read the full letter sent today to the IRS, click here.

The Board of Directors of the Campaign Legal Center this week approved the selection of Megan McAllen as the Legal Center’s first recipient of the Rapoport Legal Fellowship.  This fellowship was made possible by a generous grant from the Bernard and Audre Rapoport Foundation. The one-year position is designed for recent law school graduates embarking on careers in campaign finance and election law.   

“The generosity of the Rapoport Foundation will allow us to keep a very talented young lawyer on board here at the Legal Center as we litigate a growing number of campaign finance and election law cases around the nation,” said Legal Center Executive Director J. Gerald Hebert. “For the last year we have been lucky enough to have had Megan working with us thanks to a grant from the University of Virginia Law School and we are thrilled to be able to retain her through this new legal fellowship.”

Ms. McAllen litigates numerous campaign finance and election law issues before state and federal courts, and is also active in a range of voting rights and election protection efforts.  With J. Gerald Hebert, she co-authored “Redistricting in the Post-2010 Cycle: Lessons Learned?,” which appeared in the Winter 2012 issue of Human Rights Magazine (published by the American Bar Association’s Section of Individual Rights & Responsibilities).

Ms. McAllen is a graduate of the University of Virginia School of Law (2011) and Princeton University (2007).  She is admitted to practice law in the State of California.

Since its inception in 1986, the Bernard and Audre Rapoport Foundation has dedicated more than $54 million in grants to improve the social fabric of life.  Its mission is to meet basic human needs while building individual and social resiliency.

Today, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to grant certiorari in The Real Truth About Abortion v. FEC and left standing a lower court ruling upholding FEC rules governing donor disclosure.  The suit specifically challenged the “subpart (b)” definition of “expressly advocating” (11 C.F.R. § 100.22(b)), as well as the FEC’s methodology for determining when a group has campaign activity as its “major purpose.” Both are key measures to ensure effective determinations of federal “political committee” status, and by extension, to implement the comprehensive disclosure requirements applicable to such political committees.

“The Supreme Court has once again come down in favor of transparency, recognizing the vital importance of the public’s right to know who is paying for the political advertising geared toward swaying elections,” Legal Center Senior Counsel Tara Malloy stated.  “Even in the highly controversial Citizens United case, the Supreme Court by an 8-1 vote was clear that disclosure of political spending is critically important to our democratic process.  The Real Truth case was part of an extensive nationwide litigation campaign seeking to undermine state and federal disclosure laws, but those attempts have repeatedly been beaten back in the courts.”

Today’s denial marks the end of the long-running proceedings which began as The Real Truth About Obama (RTAO) v. FEC in 2008.  The group originally challenged a number of FEC rules, including the rule implementing the electioneering communications funding restriction that was adopted after the Supreme Court’s 2007 decision in Wisconsin Right to Life v. FEC (11 C.F.R. § 114.15).   The district court and Court of Appeals upheld all of the challenged rules in 2008 and 2009.  Subsequent judicial decisions, most notably Citizens United, mooted much of the case, however.  Consequently, in April 2010, the Supreme Court vacated the 2009 Court of Appeals’ decision, and remanded the case for further consideration in light of Citizens United and “the Solicitor General’s suggestion of mootness.”  Upon remand, the district court again considered and rejected the two remaining claims relating to the “subpart (b)” definition of “expressly advocating” and the FEC’s “major purpose” methodology in June 2011.