Maine State Attorney General Aaron Frey, alongside a number of other defendants, have appealed a lower court ruling that nixed new regulations on Super PAC contributions that was approved by voters at the ballot box last November.
Brought by the Dinner Table — a Maine PAC focused on “faith, family, and freedom” and dedicated to supporting “conservative candidates” — and its founder, Alex Titcomb, the ongoing lawsuit now headed to the federal First Circuit Court challenges the state’s new $5,000 annual limit on contributions to “independent-expenditure only” PACs, more commonly known as Super PACs.
Part of this lawsuit focuses on the For Our Future PAC, also founded by Titcomb and described in the filing as making significant contributions to the Dinner Table and other PACs for the purpose of independent expenditures.
The two briefs filed this month with the First Circuit Court of Appeals argue that the lower court was incorrect in striking down the citizens initiative, pushing back on allegations that the rules are unconstitutional.
In July, U.S. Magistrate Judge Karen Wolf permanently enjoined the State of Maine from enforcing the new limits on Super PAC contributions, citing the Supreme Court’s fifteen-year-old ruling in Citizens United which she said “forecloses limits on contribution to independent expenditure groups.”
With respect to these contribution limits, Judge Wolf found that “there is no set of circumstances where they could be applied constitutionally,” leading her to void the restrictions.
She also found that the law’s disclosure requirements were in violation of the First Amendment because they would encompass all Super PAC donors, regardless of how much any one person contributed.
Currently, donors who contribute smaller amounts are not subject to having their identities revealed in campaign finance disclosure reports.
“The disclosure requirement is facially unconstitutional because it risks chilling contributors’ rights to speak and associate, and that risk ‘is enough because First Amendment freedoms need breathing space to survive,”’ Wolf said at the time.
[RELATED: Federal Judge Blocks Maine’s New Limits on Super PAC Contributions Citing First Amendment Violations]
Under Maine state law, “independent expenditures” are defined as any communication expense — such as for advertisements or phone banks — that clearly advocates for or against a particular candidate but is “not made in cooperation, consultation or concert with, or at the request or suggestion of, a candidate, a candidate’s authorized political committee or an agent of either.”
In other words, independent expenditures encompass any campaign expenses made without collaborating with candidates.
While traditional PACs can make contributions to political candidates in addition to making independent expenditures, they are already limited to receiving no more than $5,000 a year from any single donor.
Although Super PACs cannot donate directly to candidates, they have been eligible to receive unlimited contributions from their donors.
Under the challenged law, however, contributions made by both individuals and businesses to PACs “for the purpose of making independent expenditures” would have been limited to a total of $5,000 per calendar year as well.
Super PACs first came about in 2010 in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United v. FEC in which the Justices decided that placing limitations on “independent political spending” by both individuals and corporations violated the First Amendment, arguing that these expenditures did not present a sufficient enough threat of corruption warrant government intervention.
With the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals’ subsequent decision in the case of SpeechNow v. FEC, it was determined that placing any limitations on donations to PACs making only independent expenditures was unconstitutional under the First Amendment, thus paving the way for the creation of Super PACs.
Labeled as Question 1 on the November 2024 ballot, the law limiting Super PAC contributions to $5,000 stemmed from a citizens initiative spearheaded by Harvard Law Professor and political activist Lawrence Lessig.
At the ballot box, Mainers overwhelmingly voted in favor of Question 1, which garnered about 74 percent support, the strongest result of the five statewide ballot questions.
In response to this legal challenge, enforcement of the law was repeatedly delayed by the state government while the case was pending. The last of these agreements was set to expire on Tuesday, July 15, the day that Wolf’s ruling was released.
The defendants’ latest brief, filed as part of their appeal to the First Circuit, argues that the Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling in Citizens United permits the type of restrictions imposed by last November’s referendum, contrary to the interpretation advanced by Wolf in her decision.
“In concluding otherwise, the district court erred,” argued Attorney General Frey, alongside the other defendants. “The district court overread Citizens United — a decision applying strict scrutiny to strike down a categorical ban on speech — as forbidding any limits on mere monetary donations to organizations engaged in such speech.”
“It did so despite the more relaxed level of First Amendment scrutiny applicable to contribution limits under binding Supreme Court precedent as well as the greater risk of quid pro quo corruption and its appearance in allowing unlimited contributions to super PACs,” the brief continued.
The defendants also took issue with the lower court’s take on the law’s disclosure requirements.
“As several courts have recognized, requiring disclosure of even very small contributions can serve important governmental interests in providing information to voters,” Frey said.
Click Here to Read the Full Brief
Filing a brief alongside Maine’s Attorney General was another group of defendants including Equal Citizens, an election reform non-profit founded by Harvard Professor Lawrence Lessig.
Also a part of this group is Sen. Rick Bennett (I-Oxford) who is also running for governor in Maine.
“Indeed, the District Court’s decision is particularly remarkable because it is the first federal court to hold that ‘even accepting’ that a limit on SuperPAC contributions can serve the State’s interest in combating quid pro quo corruption, such a limit is still unconstitutional simply because expenditure limits are impermissible under Citizens United,” the brief said.
“The District Court denied the people of Maine the freedom to address such corruption because it read Citizens United to hold — as a matter of law — that any risk of corruption from an independent expenditure was less than the risk from a direct contribution to a candidate or his campaign,” they wrote.
This brief goes on to suggest that reversing the lower court’s decision would be “consistent with the original meaning of the First Amendment” because it advances an “obvious public good” and prevents “dependence corruption.”
“The Act’s disclosure requirement, too, serves a vitally important interest in ensuring that voters know the source of the money that fuels their elections,” said the brief.
Click Here to Read the Full Brief
The plaintiffs in this case can be expected to file their own brief with the First Circuit at some point in the near future.
