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Today, the Campaign Legal Center (CLC) joined Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) in filing a complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC), asking it to investigate 32 political donors for excessive contributions to federal candidates during the 2012 election cycle...
Today, the Campaign Legal Center, joined by Democracy 21, filed comments with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) in response to an Advisory Opinion Request (AOR) 2013-10, in which both the Democratic and Republican parties seek to use their segregated “recount funds” to pay for office building...
Today, the Campaign Legal Center, joined by Democracy 21, filed comments in response to a Federal Election Commission (FEC) Advisory Opinion Request (AOR) 2013-17 from the Tea Party Leadership Fund, an FEC-registered political committee, seeking an exemption from the federal law requirement that it...
Today, the Campaign Legal Center and the Sunlight Foundation, represented by the Institute for Public Representation of Georgetown University Law Center, filed complaints with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) against 11 broadcast television stations for failure to publicly disclose...
Today, the Campaign Legal Center, Common Cause and the Sunlight Foundation filed complaints at the Federal Communications Commission against two television stations that incorrectly identified front groups as the “true sponsors” of political advertisements, when they were in fact paid for by one...
This evening, the Campaign Legal Center, Common Cause and the Sunlight Foundation filed a complaint at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) alleging violations of long-standing rules and law by WJLA, an ABC-affiliated broadcast station in Washington, D.C. The complaint notes that WJLA...
Yesterday, the Campaign Legal Center, Common Cause and the Sunlight Foundation filed a complaint at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) alleging violations of long-standing rules and law by WLS, an ABC broadcast television station in Chicago, IL. WLS is owned by ABC, a subsidiary of The...
On Monday, the Campaign Legal Center, joined by Common Cause and the Sunlight Foundation, urged the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to strengthen the way the agency collects and discloses information to the public and to enforce its existing rules. In a filing made in response to the...
The Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA) is broken and it is time for Congress to fix it. The LDA is falling woefully short of its stated goal of “ensuring public awareness of the efforts of paid lobbyists to influence the public decision-making process” and through this transparency “increase public...
Today, the Campaign Legal Center, Common Cause and the Sunlight Foundation filed complaints at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) against 18 television stations in 7 markets across 4 states that incorrectly identified Independence USA PAC as the “true sponsor” of political advertisements...
In March 2010, plaintiffs filed suit to challenge Montana’s corporate expenditure restriction, M.C.A. § 13-35-227, claiming that the ban was unconstitutional under Citizens United v. FEC. On June 25, 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari and summarily reversed the Montana Supreme Court’s...
Yesterday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit upheld an earlier district court ruling upholding federal rules regulating political committees and other independent spenders in Free Speech v. FEC. The Campaign Legal Center, joined by Democracy 21, had filed an amici brief in the case...
The Campaign Legal Center is pleased to announce a series of staff promotions and new hires as part of a management restructuring of the organization in response to continuing growth and the conclusion of a strategic planning review. Lawrence Noble has become General Counsel and Paul S. Ryan and T...
In 2009, Plaintiffs filed suit to prevent Washington State from making petitions connected to a state ballot measure publicly available under the state Public Records Act. Plaintiffs argued that the state records law was facially unconstitutional in connection to ballot measure petitions, and the...
In Valdes v. United States, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit reviewed the conviction of a police officer under the federal gratuities statute accepting cash from an undercover FBI agent in exchange for searching law enforcement databases for information. The D.C. Circuit, sitting en...
Three Commissioners have announced their refusal to seek higher judicial review of a court decision declaring FEC regulations unconstitutional. This is a sad dereliction of their duties, though not a surprising one given their history of placing their own personal views and philosophy ahead of the...
Today, the U.S. Supreme Court denied the petition for certiorari in Cao v. FEC, a key case concerning the federal party coordinated spending limits. The high Court’s order leaves standing the decision of the en banc Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals that strongly affirmed the constitutionality of...
Late yesterday, a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals denied a motion to stay a lower court ruling in Van Hollen v. FEC that requires comprehensive disclosure of funders for groups making “electioneering communications.” Millions of dollars have already been spent this cycle on...
Today, a federal court in Wyoming dealt another setback to groups challenging disclosure laws nationwide. Citing a “wall of precedent” upholding disclosure laws, U.S. District Judge Scott Skavdahl refused to preliminarily enjoin a number of FEC regulations and policies that implement the federal...
Yesterday, Rep. Matt Cartwright introduced H.R. 2670, the Openness in Political Expenditures Now Act (OPEN Act), to address the flood of secret political spending by corporation and unions in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Citizens Uniteddecision. The legislation would require corporations and...