Breaking News: Justice Breyer Denies Stay in Maine Campaign Finance Case

Apparently, there will be no order, just a docket entry. Here is my coverage of the earlier First Circuit decision refusing the stay. According to the BNA report I linked to this morning:

In Maine, Bopp has pressed a challenge to a voluntary public funding law that provides money to state campaigns based partly on how much is spent by an opponent or outside groups. The James Madison Center statement noted that in June the Supreme Court issued an order blocking a public campaign financing system in Arizona. The court strongly hinted that it would consider the merits of a constitutional challenge to such state public financing programs....The issues raised in the challenge "are difficult and will require careful analysis, on a fully developed record," [First Circuit] Chief U.S. Circuit Judge Sandra Lynch wrote in the court's ruling. Lynch said the court could not forecast what its ultimate judgment on the merits of the case would be and added that it found no risk of immediate injury that would warrant an injunction. The First Circuit concluded that the "emergency" claimed by the plaintiffs in the Maine case was largely of their own making because they waited until August to file their suit challenging Maine's campaign system."

Posted by Rick Hasen at 09:01 AM