During his time on the Federal Election Commission (FEC), Bradley A. Smith kept a file of letters from ordinary citizens struggling to cope with the complex web of oppressive campaign finance laws. Most did not have attorneys, and all thought that they were performing a civic duty. One letter said it all: “I will NEVER be involved with a political campaign again.”
Smith was further disturbed when the Supreme Court ruled in 2003 that Congress could ban organizations from even mentioning the name of a member of Congress in a TV ad.
This experience and that ruling reinforced his belief that an organization was needed to fight for First Amendment political speech rights. After he left the FEC, Smith, one of the nation’s leading First Amendment political speech scholars and author of Unfree Speech, founded the Center for Competitive Politics in 2005. The organization changed its name to the Institute for Free Speech in October 2017.
The organization soon began filing amicus briefs in important free speech cases and a small number of lawsuits using outside counsel. In 2007, David Keating asked for legal assistance for his pro-First Amendment organization, SpeechNow.org. As a result, the Institute became co-counsel and won the landmark case, SpeechNow.org v. FEC, creating the entities now known as “super PACs.”
The Institute also organized an unprecedented amicus effort in 2008 and 2009 in support of the Citizens United case that helped win that important decision in 2010.
David Keating became president of the Institute for Free Speech in 2012, and built a group of expert staff litigators. The Institute now has a team of the nation’s leading experts on First Amendment campaign finance litigation at a fraction of the cost of hiring outside counsel.
Other major victories include leading the fight against proposed IRS regulations to severely limit political activity, which were withdrawn, and playing a key role in the McCutcheon case, in which the Supreme Court struck down the biennial aggregate limit on contributions to candidates and political committees. Since 2015, the Institute has won four major lawsuits targeting invasive donor disclosure laws.
