Vermont can limit candidate spending, federal court rules
By The Associated Press
08.08.02
MONTPELIER, Vt. — A federal appeals court ruled yesterday that Vermont may limit the amount candidates spend running for political office, regardless of whether they accept public funding.
The U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals' ruling was the first in the nation that said a state may put a limit on candidate spending. Lawyers involved said they felt certain it would have to be decided ultimately by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Supporters of spending limits were jubilant but opponents were incredulous.
"This is an enormous victory for democracy in the United States," said John Bonifaz, a lawyer with the National Voting Rights Institute in Boston, which intervened in the case. "For the first time since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down campaign spending limits in 1976, a federal appeals court has upheld campaign spending limits in an election process."
Lawyer James Bopp, who represented the Vermont Republican Party and the Vermont Right to Life Committee anti-abortion group, said he would ask the full appeals court to overturn the 2-1 decision by a three-judge panel or else seek to go directly to the Supreme Court.
"This is one of the most dramatic examples of judicial activism in recent history where the heart of the First Amendment, which protects the right to engage in political speech, has now been deprived by a court," said Bopp, who compared the ruling to a different appeals court's ruling that the Pledge of Allegiance violates the separation between church and state.
The ruling by the U.S. 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals said that Vermont had established "a sufficiently strong government interest" in limiting spending by gubernatorial candidates to $300,000 and by candidates for lieutenant governor to $100,000.
The state also established in a 1997 law, known as Act 64, spending limits of $45,000 for other statewide candidates and as little as $4,000 for state Senate candidates and as little as $2,000 for state House candidates.
"We hold that Vermont has established that such limitations serve a sufficiently strong government interest and are narrowly tailored to permit effective campaigns," Judge Chester J. Straub wrote in the majority decision. "In particular, Act 64's expenditure limitations serve to safeguard Vermont's democratic process from the corrupting influence of excessive and unbridled fund-raising."
The ruling runs counter to other courts' interpretations of a 1976 precedent by the U.S. Supreme Court, which held that states may not limit how much a candidate may spend unless the campaign is funded by taxpayer money.
That was a point made by Judge Ralph K. Winter, who dissented from the majority and said the law violated candidates' First Amendment rights to free political speech.
"Act 64's limits on expenditures by candidates violate the First Amendment because they limit political speech, including editorializing speech by the press, for no permissible purpose, and entrust those who enforce the law with unfettered and unconstitutional discretion to determine what acts of political advocacy are permitted and prohibited," Winter said.
The majority on the appeals court said it did not accept "an unyielding interpretation" that the 1976 Supreme Court ruling known as the Buckley case declared all spending limits as unconstitutional.
Such an approach, the majority said, "would require us to ignore not only Buckley's own language, but also over three decades of experience as to how the campaign funds race has affected public confidence and representative democracy."
The appeals court also upheld Vermont's limits on campaign contributions. Gubernatorial candidates, for example, may accept no more than $400 from each contributor.
But the appeals court did throw out portions of the law, including the limits the Legislature placed on contributions from outside Vermont. Lawmakers wanted to limit to 25% the amount of contributions that could be collected from outside Vermont.
The appeals court also sent the case back to U.S. District Court in Vermont to determine what spending independent political action committees may do if they're lobbying on issues but not contributing to specific candidates.
And the appeals court told the trial court to reconsider some of the issues about money that flows between a political party's national committees and its state and local committees.
Like the original decision by District Court Judge William Sessions two years ago that threw the 2000 campaign into turmoil, the appeals court ruling has the potential for putting a wrench in the current campaign.
But the three-judge panel said it would give Sessions an opportunity to sort out some of those possible complications for candidates and decide whether the spending limits should apply to the 2002 campaign or should be delayed for two years.
The majority opinion said, however, that the state has an important role in regulating campaign contributions and spending.