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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...
Today, the Campaign Legal Center, and a coalition of reform groups, urged the Senate to vote in favor of the “Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act” (STOCK Act) when it is brought to the floor for a vote next week. The letter sent to every Senator also urges them to oppose any amendments to...
Today, the Public Interest Public Airwaves Coalition urged Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chair Julius Genachowski to take immediate steps to make effective the online public file rule adopted more than two years ago requiring commercial television stations to make their public inspection...
Today, in Han-Noggle v. City of Albuquerque, the Campaign Legal Center filed a motion to participate as amicus curiae and an accompanying amicus brief urging the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit to partially reverse a district court decision awarding fees to the City of Albuquerque in a...
Today, the Campaign Legal Center joined a number of organizations in urging the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to hold broadcasters accountable for using publicly-owned spectrum effectively and to gauge any adverse public impacts from broadcast service losses resulting from spectrum...
Today the Public Interest Public Airwaves Coalition wrote to Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chair Julius Genachowski strongly urging the Commission to take action to implement the modernized disclosure recommendations in its recent comprehensive report, The Information Needs of Communities...
Today, the Campaign Legal Center, along with seventeen other organizations, called on Senate appropriators to stop a House Appropriation subcommittee rider to block funding for a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulation that broadcasters post their public political files online.
“The...
It is unfortunate that the DISCLOSE Act has fallen victim to election season political posturing. Once the dust settles after Election Day, the Senate would be wise to revisit the DISCLOSE Act. Polls have repeatedly shown that Americans, by overwhelming margins, are strongly opposed to...
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...
Today the Federal Communications Commission took an important step to bring broadcasting into the 21st Century by requiring television broadcasters to put their public and political files online beginning this year.
Since 1965, TV broadcast stations that hold licenses from the FCC to use the...
Yesterday, by an 8-4 party-line vote, House Republican Appropriators on the Financial Services Subcommittee voted to keep voters in the dark about who is spending what in our upcoming elections. The FY13 funding bill reported out of Subcommittee included a rider prohibiting the Federal...
The Federal Election Commission (FEC) was unable to agree that ads proposed by the 501(c)(4) group American Future Fund (AFF), using recordings of President Obama’s voice and the phrases “the White House” and “the Administration,” refer to a “clearly identified candidate” and therefore constitute...
Today the Campaign Legal Center joined with the Center for Responsive Politics and six other transparency advocates and good government groups launched a petition requesting that GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney disclose the names of "bundlers" for his campaign.
Presidential candidates rely on...
Voting along party lines, the Senate failed to achieve the 60 votes needed to invoke cloture and move to consideration of S. 3369, the DISCLOSE Act. Meredith McGehee, Campaign Legal Center Policy Director issued the following statement:
Tonight Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY)...
For the second day in a row the DISCLOSE Act of 2012 (S. 3369), which would require disclosure of political spending, failed to collect the 60 votes needed to invoke cloture and move to consideration.
Meredith McGehee, Campaign Legal Center Policy Director issued the following statement:
The vote...
An as applied challenge to the constitutionality of disclosure provisions for groups running “electioneering communications” was turned away by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia in Hispanic Leadership Fund (HLF) v. the Federal Election Commission (FEC). The organization...