Here's a report from today's L.A. Times on the Griset case.
http://www.latimes.com/editions/orange/calendar/20010525/t000043815.html

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Rick Hasen
Professor of Law

Good article! I'd just been on the phone with the fppc, whining about the false statements of material fact in their press release.
http://www.fppc.ca.gov/index.html?id=48

The release claims that the court upheld the constitutionality of the slate mailer disclaimer law, so that there can now be no question that the law is constitutional.
This is exactly what the decision didn't do. Instead, the court only found that the case was final in 1994, so was not affected by the 1995 ruling in McIntyre that candidate disclaimer laws are facially unconstitutional.

The fppc is apprently trying to provide itself with cover for its ongoing war against free speech about elections. Here's a recent example.

Campaign Reporting Violations
Drake Kennedy, FPPC No. 97/97. (Index No. 70508.) Staff: Executive Director Wayne Strumpfer. Kennedy, co-owner of a billboard company in the City of Monterey Park, qualified as an independent expenditure committee in 1997. He paid the largest portion of the expenditures attributable to five mass mailings, yet failed to disclose himself as the sender of those mailings, in violation of Government Code section 84305 (5 counts). Additionally, (text omitted). $18,000 fine.

To me, deliberate misrepresentation of what the court said implies bad faith. Can evidence of bad faith defeat the good faith/qualified immunity
defense to a 1983 action?
Cordially, robbin

oh yeah, p.s., my 1994 article "state constitutional protection of democratic pluralism" is finally online,
http://communities.msn.com/robbinstewart
in the files section under thesis.



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