State high court upholds ban on campaign contributions from casinos
By The Associated Press
06.24.02
NEW ORLEANS — A sharply split Louisiana Supreme Court last week upheld a 1996 law banning casinos or casino groups from making campaign donations.
The court agreed to hear the case after state District Judge Timothy Kelley overturned the law, saying the ban violated free-speech provisions in the U.S. Constitution.
Kelley also wrote that the state failed to show that letting casinos give money to campaigns would bring real harm or lower the risk of corruption.
Chief Justice Pascal Calogero and two other judges said June 21 that the court should have struck down the law, as it did a separate section forbidding donations from anyone with a video poker license.
That ruling also was a 4-3 split. Retired Justice Harry Lemmon voted with that majority; his replacement, Justice John Weimer, joined the four-judge majority in this opinion.
Justice Jeffery Victory, writing for the majority, said there were significant differences between the two sections.
"For example, there are no limits on the number of persons who may be licensed to operate video poker in this state," Victory wrote. "In contrast, the Legislature has authorized only a single land-based casino and only 15 riverboats."
He said the video poker majority "failed to realize" that groups forbidden to give money directly to candidates may spend as much as they want to back that candidate on their own.
Moreover, he said, they keep the significant rights to join political associations, join the groups' work for candidates, urge employees to support or oppose candidates, display yard signs and work in political campaigns, and use sponsor phone banks to bring out the vote.
In addition, he noted, the ban on video poker contributions did not apply equally to everyone in the business, while the casino rules were uniform.
"We're obviously disappointed and we're not sure we can see the distinction between other forms of gaming and this," said Wade Duty, executive director of the Louisiana Casino Association.
State Ethics Board attorney Maris McCrory, who argued the case for the state, and the state attorney general's office did not immediately return calls for comment. Nor did Richard Stanley, who represented the casino association.
"I don't know how fewer licenses lends an air of inherent corruption," said Duty. "It seems to me that if there are fewer people to watch and monitor, it would be easier rather than harder."
Duty said he did not know whether the association would appeal. It can ask the Louisiana Supreme Court to reconsider its decision or go to the U.S. Supreme Court, since constitutional rights are at stake.
Victory was joined by Justices Jeannette Theriot Knoll, Chet D. Traylor and Weimer.
Justices Catherine D. Kimball and Bernette J. Johnson each wrote a dissent separate from Calogero's.
The ban on campaign donations from video poker operators was originally part of the same law, but the state Supreme Court overturned that part in 1999. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the state's appeal.
Calogero, Johnson, Kimball and Lemmon, who retired in May 2001, wrote four separate opinions to create the majority in the video poker case. Victory, joined by Knoll and Traylor, wrote the dissent.
"I think we were certainly expecting the court to follow its own ruling, especially since it was so recent," Duty said.
Johnson said she believes that barring any specific group from making political donations violates the U.S. Constitution's guarantees of free speech and freedom of association with like-minded people.
Kimball wrote that the state failed to show why it shouldn't set lower limits for casinos, rather than barring them from making any campaign donations. The majority, she wrote, treated the difference between low limits and no donations cavalierly.
In arguments last month, pro-gambling lawyers told the high court that the ban violated the industry's free-speech rights and likely hurt democracy more than it could ever stem corruption.
State lawyers countered that it was legal because gambling interests still had a political voice, through advertising and lobbying.
The Louisiana Constitution forbids gambling. The Legislature got around that by legalizing "gaming," which it limited to video poker, riverboat casinos and a single land-based casino in New Orleans.
The ban on campaign contributions was an important part of that carefully crafted exception, state ethics board attorney Maris McCrory argued.
Rick Stanley, a lawyer for the state's 15 riverboat casino license holders — 14 of which are operating — argued that casinos get licenses only after regulators find their executives are sufficiently moral. As a legal business, they should be allowed to donate, he said.
The lawsuit challenging the ban on casinos was filed in 2000 by the Casino Association of Louisiana, which includes Boyd Gaming Corp., Pinnacle Entertainment Inc., Isle of Capri Inc., Argosy Gaming Co., Penn National Gaming Inc. and Horseshoe Holding Corp. Harrah's Entertainment Inc. of Las Vegas, which operates the New Orleans casino but is not an association member, also joined the lawsuit.