In the News

SCOTUSblog: Wednesday round-up

By Edith Roberts

At the Center for Competitive Politics, Luke Wachob “discusses three consequences of an America without the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Buckley v. Valeo,” and concludes that “[p]reserving Buckley is essential to protecting the First Amendment right to free speech.”

SF Gate: Experts defend, oppose Electoral College, campaign finance rules

By Bob Egelko

The Electoral College is good for democracy and regulation of political campaign financing is generally bad, one expert on election laws told a judicial conference in San Francisco on Tuesday…

Organizers of the panel on law and politics at the annual conference of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals were evidently looking for a diversity of viewpoints, and got what they were looking for…

As for regulation, Smith – author of the 2001 book “Unfree Speech: The Folly of Campaign Finance Reform” – said laws requiring disclosure of campaign contributions provide little useful information to the public. He endorsed the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United ruling that allowed corporations and unions, as a matter of free speech, to make unlimited political donations…

Ravel, also former chairwoman of the California Fair Political Practices Commission, said she was particularly concerned with high-tech “micro-targeting” of voting populations, aimed at lowering their turnout with fabricated campaign ads and “fake news spread by bots.”

But Smith said voter participation was suffering because “campaigns are now centralized, in part because you have so many laws.”

Courthouse News Service: Voter Fraud Extremely Rare, Conference Panel Agrees

By Matthew Renda

Professor Richard Hasen, co-editor of the Election Law Journal, Ann Ravel, a law professor and former chair of the Federal Elections Commission and Bradley Smith, a professor who also formerly chaired the FEC, discussed some of the most pressing issues regarding voter confidence, campaign finance, gerrymandering and the attempts by foreign entities to influence American elections during the conference on Tuesday…

Perhaps the biggest flashpoint of contention between Smith and his counterparts came over campaign finance disclosure.

Smith said disclosure can have a chilling effect on people who would otherwise donate to campaigns, because people are forced to reveal their political affiliations when they donate money to candidates or campaigns.

Perhaps the most salient example is Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich, who resigned under pressure after it was revealed he donated millions of dollars to Proposition 8 in California, which succeeded in making same-sex marriage illegal in 2008.

Free Speech

The Atlantic: Why It’s a Bad Idea to Tell Students Words Are Violence

By Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff

Free speech, properly understood, is not violence. It is a cure for violence.

In his 1993 book Kindly Inquisitors, the author Jonathan Rauch explains that freedom of speech is part of a system he calls “Liberal Science”-an intellectual system that arose with the Enlightenment and made the movement so successful. The rules of Liberal Science include: No argument is ever truly over, anyone can participate in the debate, and no one gets to claim special authority to end a question once and for all. Central to this idea is the role of evidence, debate, discussion, and persuasion. Rauch contrasts Liberal Science with the system that dominated before it-the “Fundamentalist” system-in which kings, priests, oligarchs, and others with power decide what is true, and then get to enforce orthodoxy using violence.

Liberal Science led to the radical social invention of a strong distinction between words and actions, and though some on campus question that distinction today, it has been one of the most valuable inventions in the service of peace, progress, and innovation that human civilization ever came up with. Freedom of speech is the eternally radical idea that individuals will try to settle their differences through debate and discussion, through evidence and attempts at persuasion, rather than through the coercive power of administrative authorities-or violence.

Congress

Roll Call: House Democrats Focus on Ethics, Political Money

By Kate Ackley

Amid the collapse of a signature piece of Republican health care legislation and continued revelations about the Trump team’s ties to Russia, House Democrats have turned their spotlight on proposals to revamp ethics, campaign finance and voting rights laws…

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Sarbanes told reporters during a Tuesday news conference that their party was developing a series of legislative proposals they dubbed the “By the People Project” that would include updates to the nation’s ethics and elections systems.

Some of the measures, such as one to encourage small-dollar campaign donations and another to require additional public disclosures of political spending, have already been introduced.

Those bills are unlikely to move in the GOP-controlled Congress but will provide messaging for Democrats over the August recess and on the campaign trail into next year. Lawmakers are crafting other parts of the agenda, such as the overhaul of ethics laws.

McClatchy DC: Trump wants to legalize politics in the pulpit. The GOP House is quietly helping

By Anshu Siripurapu and William Douglas

The religious right, with a big boost from President Donald Trump, is close to effectively ending a 63-year-old law banning churches from endorsing or opposing political candidates.

House Republicans have quietly inserted into a spending bill a provision that limits the Internal Revenue Service’s ability to investigate religious organizations for violating the law…

A vote on the bill is expected before Congress leaves for its summer recess next month. Its Senate prospects are unclear.

The provision would prevent the IRS from investigating a church unless the IRS commissioner signs off and notifies Congress…

Maggie Garrett, legislative director for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a nonprofit organization, said the change would give churches “special treatment” over other tax-exempt non-profits.

“That’s the kind of favoritism that the First Amendment was designed to prevent,” she said.

A bipartisan effort to strike the language by Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., and Barbara Lee, D-Calif., failed last week.

Jewish Telegraphic Agency: ACLU urges senators to oppose bill targeting Israel boycotts

The Israel Anti-Boycott Act, introduced in March by Sens. Ben Cardin, D-Md., and Rob Portman, R-Ohio, would expand 1970s-era laws that make illegal compliance with boycotts of Israel sponsored by governments – laws inspired at the time by the Arab League boycott of Israel – to include boycotts backed by international organizations. Those adhering to boycotts would be the subject of fines…

In a letter Monday, the ACLU urged senators not to co-sponsor the measure and to oppose its passage.

“We take no position for or against the effort to boycott Israel or any foreign country, for that matter,” wrote Faiz Shakir, ACLU’s national political director. “However, we do assert that the government cannot, consistent with the First Amendment, punish U.S. persons based solely on their expressed political beliefs.”

Shakir added that “the bill would punish businesses and individuals based solely on their point of view. Such a penalty is in direct violation of the First Amendment.”

Paste Magazine: Justice Democrat Ro Khanna Wants to Reform Campaign Finance

By Walker Bragman

He told Paste that while he supports lowering the spending limits for individual campaign donations, he is working on a revolutionary plan to fix the system.

The first part of that plan involves legislation he and Beto O’Rourke introduced, to ban PACs from giving money to candidates for public office. Khanna has also called on all Democrats to join him in refusing such donations. Thus far, only seven have…

Undeterred, Khanna is also teaming up with Yale Political Science and Law Professor Bruce Ackerman and Harvard Law professor Lawrence Lessig on an initiative he called “Democracy Dollars.”

“Basically, every citizen would get $100 which they could then give to candidates or political groups,” he explained. “It would way overwhelm the private spending, and instead of 4 or 5 percent of the country participating, giving money, it would be much broader participation.”…

“Candidates would have to make a choice to either raise money from these Democracy Dollars or regular dollars,” he told Paste. “Most will choose the Democracy Dollars, because, if they don’t, their opponent will get all the democracy dollars, and they’d get outspent and also get called a plutocrat. You would basically democratize people’s ability to fund campaigns.”

IRS

Albuquerque Journal: IRS approves tax-exempt status for ABQ Tea Party

By Rick Nathanson

It took nearly eight years, but the Albuquerque Tea Party has finally been granted tax-exempt status by the Internal Revenue Service.

“What I understand is the IRS was targeting any organization that had the name ‘Tea Party’ in it or the word ‘conservative.’ We weren’t the only ones,” said Graham Bartlett, president of the local Tea Party…

Daniel Moore, the Tea Party chairman of communications and a board member, said that the process of applying for tax exempt status is normally concluded within six months, at which point “you know if you have it or not, and if you don’t you can appeal.”…

The long wait was “absolutely unusual and unconscionable and speaks directly to the issue of free speech,” Moore said.

In 2012, the American Center for Law and Justice filed a lawsuit against the IRS on behalf of the Albuquerque Tea Party as well as other conservative groups whose requests for tax-exempt status seemed to be put on hold during the Obama administration.

Independent Groups

Forbes: Facebook Removes Only A Fraction Of Hate Groups Flagged By Activists

By Rebecca Heilweil

If a platform decides to remove hate speech, the task is easier said than done. While some advocacy groups say Facebook outperforms peer platforms in removing hateful content, others want the company to do more. Complicating the issue is the fact that many groups accused of hate speech believe they are engaged in legitimate political commentary and that should be protected by the principles of free speech…

By the end of 2017, Facebook says it will hire 3,000 additional content moderators to ensure that its 2 billion users adhere to the social media company’s “Community Standards.” Yet, if these moderators continue like Facebook’s 4,500 current moderators, they could be accidentally censoring journalists and activists, while giving a pass to hate groups reported to Facebook by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Whether social media companies should be in the business of censoring users is still being worked out, both legally and culturally, but Facebook, as a social media company diving head first into regulating hate speech on its platforms, is struggling.

The States

Albuquerque Journal: New hearing on ‘dark-money’ proposal

By Dan McKay

One speaker described “dark-money” spending in elections as a disease, and others said their First Amendment rights are at stake.

The provocative testimony was part of a public hearing Tuesday on Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver’s proposal to impose new disclosure requirements on nonprofit and advocacy groups that spend big sums of money in New Mexico elections…

Tom Greer, a Belen business owner and state field director for Concerned Veterans for America, said disclosure would open people up to harassment simply for donating to a small cause they believe in and have a “chilling effect.” The new rules should be crafted through the legislative process, he said, not handled by administrative rules issued by the secretary of state.

“This proposal is an attack on our First Amendment rights, which include privacy,” Greer said.