Litigation

Citizens United: An Update of News, Analysis

By Peter Hardin

Former Sen. Norm Coleman, a Minnesota Republican, is CEO of a new group that appears poised to take advantage of Citizens United by pumping large sums into congressional contests this year.

Coleman (photo at left) heads American Action, a Republican-led group that calls itself an “action tank,” according to a TPMMuckraker article. The former senator told National Journal that using its political arm, American Action expects to spend $25 million for political advertising in 25 House races and 8 to 10 Senate races. “We’ll use the tools available to us in the post-Citizens United [world,]” he told the magazine.

On a related front, Democrats are expected to introduce legislation in Congress next week responding to Citizens United. The bill would mandate increased disclosure of expenditures by corporations, unions and non-profit groups for political advertising, the Washington Post reported. It also would require such trade groups as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to name companies that contribute for its political spending.

An outline of the bill was criticized by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce as ?nothing more than a thinly-veiled attempt to hijack the political playing field to his advantage on the eve of mid-term elections,” according to The Blog of Legal Times.

The landmark Citizens United ruling permits corporations to spend unlimited sums on advertising to support or oppose political candidates. It relied on a seminal 1976 decision by the Supreme Court, Buckley v. Valeo. Election law expert Richard Hasen of Loyola Law School Los Angeles takes a look at the future of campaign finance jurisprudence in an analysis entitled “The Nine Lives of Buckley v. Valeo;” there’s an abstract and link in his Election Law blog.

Meanwhile the Campaign Legal Center, a partner of Justice at Stake, has filed a friend-of-the-court brief asking the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reject a challenge brought by the Republican National Committee to limits on the spending that is coordinated between political parties and their candidates.

The blog of the CLC reports that the lawsuit in Cao v. Federal Election Commission is one of two initiated by the RNC and its allies that seek to “radically deregulate party fundraising and campaign spending.” The lawsuits were filed after Republican Sen. John McCain’s loss in the 2008 presidential election.

You can learn more about Citizens United from Gavel Grab and from this JAS online resource page.

Full post as published by The Gavel on April 23, 2010 (boomark / email).