Legal News

Monday at the High Court: A Case With Echos of Citizens United

By Ashby Jones

The big Supreme Court argument of the week — Tuesday’s sex-discrimination case involving Wal-Mart — threatens to overshadow everything else on the court’s docket for the rest of the month.

But one shouldn’t overlook an argument taking place Monday involving a campaign-finance law in Arizona — one that brings back to the fore some of the issues that arose in last year’s high controversial Citizens United case.

According to this story in the USA Today:

The dispute centers on an Arizona public-financing system that provides extra funds to candidates who participate in the system when their opponents who don’t participate raise and spend money beyond a set limit. The question is whether the law that triggers a second set of public matching funds, beyond an initial lump sum, impinges on the opponents’ free speech by discouraging them from spending extra money in their campaigns.

Click here for a story from the Christian Science Monitor; here for a story from National Public Radio; here for a preview from Scotusblog.

On one side: the three Arizona legislative candidates who challenged the law. They say the law squelches political messages.

But a prominent group of former governors, U.S. senators and other officials are arguing that a the system “adds voices to the political forum.”

According to the USA Today, the challengers to the system describe it as “a yoke around the neck of” candidates who opt out. They say their speech rights are violated because when they spend more on their own campaigns, they trigger “subsidies to the very participating candidates they oppose.”

Arizona state officials, however, argue that their law “combats corruption and promotes free speech by providing an independent funding source for those candidates willing to abide by several restrictions,” such as how much money they can raise.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on March 28, 2011 (boomark / email).