One of Ronald Reagan’s judges, a guy who has held senior status on the Eastern District of Virginia court for thirteen years, just ripped up the last shred of campaign finance law in this country.
A federal judge in Virginia has declared unconstitutional a century-old law banning political contributions from corporations, a ruling that, if upheld, could have major implications for the rules governing campaign fund-raising and spending…
…the ruling drew from and extended the reasoning in the Supreme Court’s landmark decision last year in the Citizens United case. The justices ruled in that case that the government may not ban political spending by corporations in candidate elections, but did not address the current bans on direct contributions by corporations to candidates.
In his decision, Judge Cacheris said that if corporations and people have an equivalent right to free speech under Citizens United, they also have an equivalent right to contribute to candidates, albeit within the same limits currently established by federal law.
“That logic is inescapable here,” Judge Cacheris wrote.
If upheld, corporations could give money directly to candidates for office, but they would still be bound by the individual caps that we all must abide by as individual citizens. Yet, it would make it impossible to police campaign giving.
“If this case stood, it would mean the end of campaign contribution limits for everyone, because it would be so easy to get around the law through a straw or sham corporation,” said Richard L. Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine, who is helping to defend a lawsuit challenging municipal campaign laws in San Diego.
Indeed, I would expect the number of corporations to explode, with tens of thousands of them being created each election cycle for the simple purpose of expanding the power of rich assholes to give more money to campaigns than regular folks are allowed to do. Individual candidates would face a compliance nightmare just trying to vet their donors.
This is what happens when Republicans seize control of our judiciary. They try to destroy us. Maybe they do destroy us.
two way street man.
these guys had to go through a confirmation process: were they all confirmed on a straight party line vote?
Dude was confirmed in 1981. Good luck finding the roll call on it.
Part of me says the same thing, though, now that Citizens United is the law of the land. I just don’t understand how we can constitutionally put ANY limits on campaign contributions when we’re using a model of money = speech in a post-Citizens United. Prior to that, I’d say he was wrong. But after…?
A law lies on the books for a century and suddenly it’s unconstitutional? In such cases, there should be evidence of a significant change in moral standards, e.g., in favor of minority and women’s rights. But where is the evidence that people have evolved their thinking on corporations giving money to political candidates?
Nowhere, which is why I find Citizens United to have been wrongly decided. So while I don’t agree with this judge’s decision, I also don’t find it terribly wrong either in a post-Citizens United world. It’s going to the SCOTUS sometime or another anyway…and we know how they’re going to rule.
Time to pass a law explicitly saying that corporations aren’t people. Weird stating the obvious, I know, and damned unlikely to pass, but that’s the only way to end this mess.
I spent six months last year flipping channels every time Meg Whitman’s ugly mug came on TV. If you lived in California in 2010 then imagine this multiplied by 100.
Can it be done with a simple (hah!) act of Congress? Most of the discussion I’ve come across has indicated that a constitutional amendment would be needed.
I don’t think an amendment is needed to overturn or bypass a court’s decision. To rational people, there’s nothing in the Constitution that remotely justifies the Citizens United atrocity.
Corporations are supposed to be tools for shedding individual liability and creating entities that can resource financing while escaping taxation that individuals would be subject to.
Before this era of encouraged campaign finance silver platter they were not allowed to vote. Now, they have gotten something much better than a vote in our society. They have access to blocks of votes.
Where will this meantality stop? We already have corp using a heavy hand (like McDonalds did) to push employees to vote for a particular candidate who favors corp, will this evolve into more of that same?
What can’t money buy?
Can we use the f word yet?
It’s getting late.
The outstanding issue raised by C.U. and the decisions that cascade from it is: how should/can the left respond?
I think the answer lies in doubling down on organizing. But I have no idea how to get the zillions of left-leaning organizations to coordinate their efforts or pool their funding. And many groups will try to respond in kind, which I think is foolish because they will be so massively outgunned.
Suggestions?