A Koch brothers advocacy group can keep its donor list secret for now, with a federal judge ruling that revealing the identities would chill free speech.The ruling comes as billionaires Charles and David Koch seek to raise almost $1 billion in the run-up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election.Americans for Prosperity Foundation, a nonprofit foundation started by the brothers, persuaded the judge on Tuesday to block California Attorney General Kamala Harris’s demand for the names and addresses of its donors while the group challenges the state’s disclosure requirements. The foundation, which promotes limited government and free markets and conservative causes, claims its contributors may be at risk of being targeted by its opponents, and would-be donors could be scared off, if their identities became known.Continues: U.S. District Judge Manuel Real, in granting the group’s request to prevent Harris from seeking the information until the legality of the request has been resolved, cited a separate case in which the U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco halted the attorney general from enforcing the demand on the Center for Competitive Politics while that case was before that court.
