Bloomberg BNA: Ruling Against Colorado Disclosure Law Left Intact
By Kenneth P. Doyle
The U.S. Supreme Court let stand a federal appeals court ruling that said Colorado’s campaign finance disclosure requirements could not apply to a group that raised and spent only $3,500 to influence a ballot initiative (Williams v. Coalition for Secular Government , U.S., No. 16-28, cert. denied 10/3/16).
The Supreme Court’s Oct. 3 action denying the state’s petition for review was “the final chapter for Colorado’s speech laws that buried grassroots groups in red tape,” Tyler Martinez, an attorney for the nonprofit Center for Competitive Politics (CCP), said. CCP, a critic of campaign finance regulation, represented the challenger of the Colorado disclosure law, a nonprofit group called the Coalition for Secular Government.
“When a few citizens want to voice an opinion, the government can’t subject them to burdensome disclosure rules designed for multimillion-dollar campaigns,” Martinez said.
