Today the U.S. Supreme Court decided Watchtower Bible and Tract Society
of New York v. Village of Stratton (No 00-1737). The Court struck down
on First Amendment grounds a local village's law requiring anyone who
wished to go door-to-door to advocate for a political cause to first
obtain a permit and display that permit to a resident on demand. The
case has important implications for campaign finance disclosure laws
because the petitioners relied upon two campaign finance disclosure
cases (McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission, 514 U.S. 334 (1995) and
Buckley v. American Constitutional Law Foundation, 525 U.S. 182 (1999))
in arguing for the law's unconstitutionality.  Many lower courts had
been relying on McIntyre in striking down various campaign finance
disclosure laws on grounds that there is a general right of anonymity to
engage in campaign related speech.

I filed a brief with lawyers at the Brennan Center for Justice urging
the Justices to use this case to clarify that McIntyre and ACLF do not
render unconstitutional most campaign finance disclosure laws; rather,
the cases apply to prevent disclosure only of the identity of lone
pamphleteers and others engaging in "face-to-face" communications in
non-candidate campaigns. They do not prevent the filing of reports and
other "larger circumstances" of campaign finance.

The Court appears to have sent a strong signal in that direction today.
It characterized McIntyre as a case "involving distribution of unsigned
handbills" (Slip op. at 14). More importantly, it recognized that the
state "may well be justified" in requiring the identity of persons
canvassing based on "the special state interest in protecting the
integrity of a ballot-initiative process."  (Slip op. at 15.) If that
special state interest applies in the ballot-initiative context, it must
apply in the candidate campaign context as well. In the candidate
context, as the Court in McIntyre, Bellotti, and other cases has
recognized, the state has a strong interest in disclosure for the
additional reason that it serves to prevent corruption by showing
connections between donors and potential official action.

The case may be downloaded from the Court's website at:

http://a257.g.akamaitech.net/7/257/2422/17jun20021100/www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/01pdf/00-1737.pdf



--
Rick Hasen
Professor of Law and William M. Rains Fellow
Loyola Law School
919 South Albany Street
Los Angeles, CA  90015-1211
(213)736-1466 - voice
(213)380-3769 - fax
rick.hasen@lls.edu
http://www.lls.edu/academics/faculty/hasen.html