The First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston heard arguments Wednesday in a case out of Maine concerning the state’s new regulations on Super PAC contributions as approved by voters at the ballot box in 2024.
This comes after Maine State Attorney General Aaron Frey, alongside a number of other defendants, appealed a lower court ruling that nixed the measure last year.
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 with the First Circuit Court of Appeals argued that the lower court was incorrect in striking down the citizens initiative, pushing back on allegations that the rules are unconstitutional.
This time last year, 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 to 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.
[RELATED: First Circuit Court of Appeals to Consider Challenge of Maine’s New Super PAC Contribution Limits]
“We’re in a different world and I think that justifies taking a new look at this,” Jonathan Bolton, an assistant attorney general for Maine, told judges on the First Circuit Court of Appeals Wednesday, as reported by Maine Public.
“It is a thing of value for a candidate to receive these massive donations to a super PAC that they know is going to be running ads either to support them or oppose their opponent,” Bolton said. “That is sort of the new world that we live in. None of these other courts have had the occasion to consider it.”
“When the people of Maine decided by the largest vote in the state’s 206-year history that unlimited super PAC contributions were corrupting our elections, did the First Amendment leave them powerless? It did not,” said Neal Katyal, an attorney for Equal Citizens.
“People now, if they want to buy influence, they don’t make the direct donations,” Katyal added. “Because all they have to do is donate it to this candidate-aligned super PAC and there are no limits.”
Charles Miller, an attorney from the Institute for Free Speech, however, presented the court with a much different picture.
“You have to have that quid pro quo — you know like, ‘Hey, I’m going to give you this money — do this for me.'” Miller told the judges. “You need that ‘do this for me’ and the agreement of the candidate.”
The court pressed Miller on situations that have the potential to create the “appearance” of quid pro quo corruption, arguing that for that to be the case, money would need to be directly controlled by a candidate or their campaign.
“Because the Supreme Court says anything else is simply influence and access and ingratiation,” Miller said. “And no matter how ugly people that is, it’s constitutionally protected.”
“Certainly 70% of the people want less political spending. They don’t want their cell phones ringing all the time. They don’t like seeing these ads,” Miller said, according to News Center Maine. “And so when you ask somebody to vote, ‘Will you vote for less of this? Yeah, stop the noise.’ That doesn’t mean that they perceive actual quid pro quo corruption.”
Should the appeals court uphold Maine’s new law, it is likely that this case could eventually appear before the United States Supreme Court.
