[EL] Judge Brown

[Steve Hoersting]

Jagger or no, I recall Judge Brown being partially on the wrong side of
EMILY'S List and wholly on the wrong side of McCutcheon.

She is equally incorrect in her treatment of Stop This Insanity's Employee
Leadership Fund.

Without my having read the opinion,  it seems J. Brown took the FEC's bait
and focused on the rights of the corporation, STI, and skipped over the
real question in the case: the rights of the hybrid PAC to solicit the
general public to finance IEs; the rights of the Employee Leadership Fund.

It is the Fund's -- that is the hybrid PAC's -- right to solicit the
general population for IEs.

The corporation is not the PAC. (See CU).

Any entity has a fundamental right to finance and make independent
communications. Id.

That the 40-year-old holdover dispensation in FECA -- permitting the
corporation to pay the administrative expenses of a separate segregated PAC
-- cannot alter the constitutional question.

The PAC's constitutional right to solicit the general public for $ for IEs
is nothing more than a reason for Congress to rework the exemption in light
of CU, EMILY's List and Carey v. FEC.

***

This case would have most benefited the union PACs, who (unlike corporate
PACs) would have had little or no public-relations compunction about
soliciting the general public for political contributions to their PACs
(specifically for IEs).

Regrettably, the unions won't be joining the roles of ActBlue.

Because, regrettably, it is unlikely SCOTUS will accept this clean-up of a
now-problematical, holdover provision in FECA. Unlike BCRA, FECA provisions
don't get automatic review
... a point CJ Roberts recently made in McCutcheon.

Steve

Sent from my Phone.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://webshare.law.ucla.edu/Listservs/law-election/attachments/20140805/b86fecc1/attachment.html>