On July 8, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that the Federal Election Commission (FEC) needs to take action in response to a Campaign Legal Center (CLC) complaint filed against the Clinton presidential campaign and Correct the Record — a super PAC — for illegally coordinating their activities during the 2016 election.
This a major win for transparency in a case that has gone on for nearly a decade, particularly at a time when the FEC’s poor enforcement of the law has helped fuel an environment where big donors across the ideological spectrum are doing everything they can to gain an unfair share of influence in our democracy.
CLC’s original complaint was prompted by Correct the Record spending up to $9 million to coordinate activities with Hillary Clinton’s campaign, with neither entity reporting these funds as in-kind contributions in its FEC filings.
Not only did this amount of money far exceed in-kind contribution limits, but this arrangement also ran afoul of the law because independent expenditure groups like super PACs, as a condition of their status, pledge not to coordinate their spending with candidates’ campaigns.
The FEC decided through a deadlock vote in 2019 to dismiss this complaint, in part because the agency claimed that coordinated spending between Correct the Record and the Clinton campaign fell under its “internet exemption” for "unpaid” communications made for online distribution.
CLC has challenged this decision in court for years, arguing that much of the unlawful coordination identified — such as opposition research, training campaign spokespeople, and press outreach — were not solely web-based in nature.
The July 8 ruling is significant because it affirms a previous ruling in December 2022 by the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia that found that the FEC acted “contrary to the law” by dismissing CLC’s initial complaint and directed the FEC to take action on this complaint.
Under this new ruling, the FEC must create reasonable standards for interpreting its coordination rules and the “internet exemption” and reconsider whether to investigate and enforce the law in response to violations identified by CLC.
This multiyear legal battle has confirmed that our concerns over potential illegal in-kind contributions made by Correct the Record to the Clinton campaign were warranted, and particularly that this scheme concealed sources of financial support from public scrutiny.
Voters have a right to know who is spending money to try and influence our elections. As we head into an election season that is likely to break past records on campaign spending, the FEC has a duty to crack down on entities who violate campaign finance laws.