Western Trad Partnership, ATI v Montana
Western Tradition Partnership, Inc. v. Attorney General of Montana
SEE KICKASS WHITEHOUSE MCCAIN
NO MERRI
any co-ord with CU? who is lawyer? BOPP filed appeal of montana scotus overturn CU ? ( i do not see his name on doc]
no high profile nat'l lawyers b/c scotus refused to hear it?
see bak
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sequel?
http://freespeechforpeople.org/big-money-strikes-again-in-montana/}:
may 2016?
lair
update?
...For the time being, the state has reinstated the pre-1994 contribution limits. Meanwhile, the governor has urged the state attorney general to appeal the decision.
Stepping back, there’s a larger trend of big money interests suing to overturn contribution limits in rural states, from Vermont to Montana to Alaska. (In the Alaska case, the parties just finished a seven-day trial, and are awaiting for the judge’s decision.) Opponents of campaign finance reform like to piggyback on the unpopularity of the U.S. Congress, or claim that campaign finance reform is incumbents protecting themselves from difficult re-election campaigns. But the big money litigation strategy challenging contribution limits passed directly by Montana’s voters themselves unmasks the game: reform opponents’ real concern is not about mistrusting Congress, and it’s definitely not about incumbent self-protection. It’s about preserving the unequal power of wealthy donors and weakening the principle of “one person, one vote.”...
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Lair v. Motl
Free Speech For People has filed an amicus brief before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in support of Montana’sdefense of its campaign contribution limits for state elections. Our brief argues that large campaign contributions give wealthy donors more influence than ordinary voters, and Montana has an interest in protecting voter equality from this danger.
Montana voters passed these contribution limits as part of a 1994 ballot initiative.The challengers claim that the limits are too low and violate their right to freedom of speech.
Free Speech For People’s amicus brief argues that large contributions give wealthy funders more of a vote than ordinary citizens, and that this threatens the principle of voter equality established in the Supreme Court’s voting rights cases. Our brief argues that Montana has a compelling state interest in protecting voter equality by imposing contribution limits that prevent individual funders from contributing so much that ordinary Montanans’ right to vote is abridged.
We were joined in this brief by the Honorable James Nelson (a retired Justice of the Montana Supreme Court), the Montana-based American Independent Business Alliance, and the American Sustainable Business Council.
:{Free Speech For People amicus brief in :(style="background-color:#ffffffff"):}:*Lair v. Motl*:{ }:
American Tradition Partnership, Inc. v. Bullock - SCOTUSblog
11-1179-Senators-Whitehouse-and-McCain-Cert-Amicus
NEAL KATYAL
==
Last week, Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) submitted an amicus brief ” urging the U.S. Supreme Court to let stand Montana’s century-old ban on corporate money in political campaigns despite the court’s Citizens United ruling two years ago declaring unconstitutional a similar federal law sponsored by McCain.”
The challenge to Montana’s ban on corporate money comes from a shadowy group called American Tradition Partnership (ATP).
ATP is a group based in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area that waslaunched in 2008 as a 501(c)4 lobbying group called Western Tradition Partnership. It was then renamed American Tradition Partnership. The policy agenda listed on its website runs the gamut of anti-environmental causes. It advocates for everything from curbing environmental lawsuits to winning tax holidays for energy producers.
ATP was found to have broken campaign finance laws in Montana in 2010 when it failed to properly register and report its donors as it staged electoral interventions on behalf of polluter-friendly lawmakers. Montana[?] journalist Sue Sturgis wrote at the time:
A decision issued last year by the Montana Commission of Political Practices found that [ATP] had broken state campaign laws by failing to register as a political committee or properly report its donors and spending. The investigation discovered that the group had solicited unlimited contributions to support pro-mining, pro-logging and pro-development candidates in Montana and avoided disclosing the contributions by passing them along to a sham political action committee that in turn ran attack ads against Democrats.
The group decided to sue to overturn Montana’s Corrupt Practices Act of 1912. Although a lower judge ruled that the Citizens United decision meant the law was unconstitutional, Montana’s Supreme Court ruled 5-2 that Citizens United does not affect the law.
When ATP was still Western Tradition Partnership, it was lead by Donald Ferguson, who is now on the site as ATP’s National Director of Media & Public Relations. I tried calling Ferguson for comment but he did not pick up. The “main number” listed on ATP’s site – 1-888-987-USA1—has apparently been disconnected. What I could find about Ferguson was a Twitter account that is apparently his and a personal blog called The Ferguson Forum, where he opines largely about Washington-area sports.
Because it has a 501(c)4 tax status, the group does not have to disclose its donors or much about its funding. The group has a 501(c)3 educational arm, the American Tradition Institute (ATI), but it there were no 990 financial disclosure forms that are required by the IRS listed on Guidestar, which logs these forms on the web. ATI’s executive director is Tom Tanton, who, unsurprisingly, has both worked at an Exxon-funded think tank and headed up an energy consulting company.
If you don’t want shadowy polluter-allied lobbies and think tanks overturning state campaign finance laws, you should help us fight the influence of Big Money in our politics. Thank McCain and Whitehouse for standing against money in politics here.
- See more at: http://www.republicreport.org/2012/meet-the-group-trying-to-use-citizens-united-to-kill-montanas-ban-on-corporate-spending-in-elections/#sthash.MPI3JGJx.dpuf
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THE LEVER MASTER PLAN
FEC V WISC RTL
DAVID:Whitehouse and John McCain tried to quickly limit the rulings effects. They asked the Supreme Court to at least prevent a lower court in Montana from now using Citizens United to gut that state's 100 year old anti corruption law the Supreme Court refused to even hear the case.}:}:
SEN. SHELDON WHITEHOUSE: So at that point, I realized, Oh, my God, this is not an innocent mistake. They are actually deliberately trying to open our political world to right wing political dark money.
DAVID: In my imagination, James Bopp was celebrating back home in Indiana when he read the Citizens United ruling.....
DAVID: He was psyched. But if he doesn't sound 100% excited about the ruling, it's because he kind of wasn't sure he had gotten most of what he wanted. He had created a case that convinced the court to go huge and eviscerate campaign finance laws in a world changing ruling, four years before Citizens United, nonprofits and other non disclosing political groups had spent $0 in the 2006 election cycle. In 2010 right after the ruling, those groups accounted for 47 percent of political spending, $134 million but still, there was one part of the Citizens Unitedruling that stuck in James Bopp's craw.
JAMES BOPP JR.: They upheld a report, the disclosure Yeah, the disclosure report.
DAVID: Remember David Bossie originally asked Bopp to help his group circumvent the McCain Feingold law and letCitizens United air its glorified anti-Hillary campaign ad in the middle of the election. But Bossie also told Bopp he wanted to ignore the McCain-Feingold law's disclosure provisions and hide the names of the ad's funders from the public on that disclosure issue, the court actually ruled against Citizens United
The court ruled that laws requiring big spenders in elections and politics to be disclosed, those laws were constitutional. We reject Citizens United's challenge to the disclaimer and disclosure provisions. Those mechanisms provide information to the electorate, the resulting transparency enables the electorate to make informed decisions and give proper weight to different speakers and different messages.}:}:
DAVID: When he heard this caveat, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse saw an opportunity to call the Supreme Court's bluff. He introduced a bill called the Democracy Is Strengthened by Casting Light On Spending in Elections. Act, a hilariously wordy attempt to get a pithy acronym the DISCLOSE Act.}:}:
SEN. SHELDON WHITEHOUSE:The DISCLOSE Act was originally designed to require that you trace back to the actual source of political contributions for any contribution to a political campaign, or a PAC or a Super PAC, over $10,000 in a individual race. That's not a whole lot of people, but at that level, you really are buying influence. And so I think it's important for voters to understand what's going on in their political world around them.
DAVID: Democrats rallied behind the DISCLOSE Act right away, while Republicans like Mitch McConnell contorted themselves to swat it down.
...
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THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF MONTANA
2011 MT 328
WESTERN TRADITION PARTNERSHIP, INC.,
a corporation registered in the State of Montana,
and CHAMPION PAINTING, INC., a Montana
corporation, MONTANA SHOOTING SPORTS
ASSOCIATION, INC., a Montana corporation,
Plaintiffs, Appellees and
Cross-Appellants,
v.
ATTORNEY GENERAL of the State of Montana,
and COMMISSIONER OF THE COMMISSION
FOR POLITICAL PRACTICES,
Defendants and Appellants.
APPEAL FROM: District Court of the First Judicial District,
In and For the County of Lewis and Clark, Cause No. BDV 10-238
Honorable Jeffrey M. Sherlock, Presiding Judge
COUNSEL OF RECORD:
For Appellants:
Steve Bullock (argued), Montana Attorney General; Anthony Johnstone,
Solicitor, James P. Molloy, Assistant Attorney General, Helena, Montana
For Appellees:
Margot E. Barg (argued);Wittich Law Firm, P.C., Bozeman, Montana
For Amici Curiae:
Amy Poehling Eddy; Bottomly, Eddy & Sandler, Kalispell, Montana
(for former Montana Supreme Court Justices William E. Hunt, Sr., W.
William Leaphart, James M. Regnier, Terry N. Trieweiler and John
Warner)
December 30 2011
Lawrence A. Anderson, Attorney at Law, Great Falls, Montana
(for MTLA, Montana Conservation Voters, Montanans for Corporate
Accountability, and Montana League of Rural Voters)
Elizabeth L. Griffing, Attorney at Law; Erin Kraft, Clinic Student,
University of Montana, Missoula, Montana
(for ACLU of Montana Foundation)
JonathanMotl; Morrison Motl & Sherwood, Helena, Montana
Jeffrey D. Clements, Clements Law Office, LLC, Concord, Massachusetts
(for Free Speech for People; American Sustainable Business Council;
Novak and Novack, Inc., d/b/a Mike’s Thriftway; Home Resource, Inc.,
and The American Independent Business Alliance)
Mark Mackin, Attorney at Law, Helena, Montana
(for MontanaPublic Interest Research Group and Peoples Power League)
Karl J. Englund, Karl J. Englund, P.C., Missoula, Montana;
Karl J. Sandstrom, Perkins Coie LLP, Washington, D.C.
Michael T. Liburdi, James A. Ahlers, Jerica L. Peters, Perkins CoieLLP,
Phoenix, Arizona
(for Domini Social Investments LLC; Trillium Asset Management GREEN SUSTAINABLE
Corporation; Newground Social Investment; Interfaith Center On
Corporate Responsibility; Harrington Investments, Inc.; The Sustainability
Group of Loring, Wolcott & Coolidge; Calvert Asset Management
Company, Inc.; The Christopher Reynolds Foundation, Inc.; and Walden
Asset Management, a Division of Boston Trust & Investment
Management Company)
Lee Bruner, Attorney at Law, Butte, Montana
Allen Dickerson, Attorney at Law,Alexandria, Virginia
(for Center for Competitive Politics
==
IRATE
American Tradition Partnership, Inc., FKA Western Tradition Partnership, Inc., etal. v. Steve Bullock, Attorney General of Montana 567 U.S. __ (2012)
Per Curiam
INSERT DEF: Per curiam is a Latin term meaning "by the court." It refers to a court opinion, typically from an appellate court, that is issued in the name of the court as a whole rather than being attributed to a specific judge. These opinions are often short and address issues the court views as relatively straightforward.
ON PETITION FOR WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE SUPREME COURT OF MONTANA
No. 11–1179. Decided June 25, 2012
PER CURIAM.
A Montana state law provides that a “corporation may not make . . . an expenditure in
connection with a candidate or a political committee that supports or opposes a candidate or a
political party.” Mont. Code Ann. §13–35–227(1) (2011). The Montana Supreme Court rejected
petitioners’ claim that this statute violates the First Amendment. 2011 MT 328, 363 Mont. 220,
271 P. 3d 1. In Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, this Court struck down a similar
federal law, holding that “political speech does not lose First Amendment protection simplybecause its source is a corporation.” 558 U. S. _, _ (2010) (slip op., at 26) (internal quotation}:
marks omitted). The question presented in this case is whether the holding of Citizens United applies to the Montana state law. There can be no serious doubt that it does.See U. S. Const.,
Art. VI, cl. 2. Montana’s arguments in support of the judgment below either were already rejected in Citizens United, or fail to meaningfully distinguish that case.
The petition for certiorari is granted. The judgment of the Supreme Court of Montana isreversed.
It is so ordered.
JUSTICE BREYER, with whom JUSTICE GINSBURG, JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR, and JUSTICEKAGAN join, dissenting.
In Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Court concluded that “independent
expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the
appearance of corruption.” 558 U. S. _, _ (2010) (slip op., at 42). I disagree with the Court’s
hold-ing for the reasons expressed in Justice Stevens’ dissentin that case. As Justice Stevens
explained, “technically independent expenditures can be corrupting in much the same way as
direct contributions.” Id., at _ (slip op., at 67–68). Indeed, Justice Stevens recounted a
“substantial body of evidence” suggesting that “[m]any corporate independent expenditures . . .
had become essentially interchangeable with direct contributions in their capacity to generate
quid pro quo arrangements.” Id., at _ (slip op., at 64–65).
Moreover, even if I were to accept Citizens United, this Court’s legal conclusion should not
bar the Montana Supreme Court’s finding, made on the record before it, that
independent expenditures by corporations did in fact lead to corruption or the
appearance of corruption in Montana. Given the history and political landscape in Montana,
that court concluded that the State had a compelling interest in limiting independent
expenditures by corporations. 2011 MT 328, ¶¶ 36–37, 363 Mont. 220, 235–236, 271 P. 3d 1, 2
36–37. Thus, Montana’s experience, like considerable experience elsewhere since the Court’s
decision in Citizens United, casts grave doubt on the Court’s supposition that independent
expenditures do not corrupt or appear to do so.
Were the matter up to me, I would vote to grant the petition for certiorari in order to reconsider
Citizens United or, at least, its application in this case. But given the Court’s per curiam
disposition, I do not see a significant possibility of reconsideration. Consequently, I vote instead
to deny the petition.[huh?]
===
December 30, 2011 and After: Montana Supreme Court Rules that State Campaign Finance Ban Stands in Spite of ‘Citizens United’ Decision
The Montana Supreme Court rules 5-2 in the case ofWestern Tradition Partnership v. Bullockthat a century-old law prohibits corporate spending in state and federal elections conducted within the state. The ruling seems to challenge the US Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling (see January 21, 2010). The case stems from a challenge by a “social welfare organization,” Western Tradition Partnership (WTP, which changed its name to American Tradition Partnership after the original lawsuit was filed),joined by two other corporate entities, to Montana’s 1912 Corrupt Practices Act (CPA). The law banned corporate spending in elections, after two out-of-state copper industry magnates attempted to “buy” the Montana legislature by pouring money into the 1894 state elections. The law declares that “corporations may not make… an expenditure in connection with a candidate or a political committee that supports or opposes a candidate or a political party.”
The Montana Supreme Court finds that the CPA is needed to ensure the integrity of Montana’s elections, and to make sure that citizens and not corporations are running the state. However, the Court acknowledges that its ruling conflicts with the Citizens United decision, though it says that the Citizens United decision allows for restrictions on corporate political speech if the government can demonstrate that the restrictions are as minimal as possible to achieve a compelling governmental interest. The Montana Court rules that because of Montana’s history of corporate vote-buying and the narrow restrictions of the CPA, the law should stand. It also notes that Western Tradition Partnership argued in its original suit that disclosure laws, as opposed to outright bans, would serve the public interest and guard against corruption; however, the organization is currently involved in another lawsuit in which it argues that those same disclosure laws are unconstitutional restrictions of the freedom of speech.
[WESTERN TRADITION PARTNERSHIP V. BULLOCK ET AL, 12/30/2011 
; LOS ANGELES TIMES, 1/4/2012; REUTERS, 6/25/2012; OMB WATCH, 6/25/2012; WASHINGTON POST, 6/25/2012;OMB WATCH, 7/10/2012]
Even one of the dissenters, Justice James C. Nelson, disagrees with the Citizens United characterizations that corporations are legally people, writing: “Corporations are not persons. Human beings are persons, and it is an affront to the inviolable dignity of our species that courts have created a legal fiction which forces people—human beings—to share fundamental, natural rights with soulless creatures of government.
Worse still, while corporations and human beings share many of the same rights under the law, they clearly are not bound equally to the same codes of good conduct, decency, and morality, and they are not held equally accountable for their sins. Indeed, it is truly ironic that the death penalty and hell are reserved only to natural persons.” WTP’s director Donald Ferguson says after the decision that the case hinges on freedom of speech (see January 21, 2010): “The current state law says that if you own a business and you would like to use the resources of the business to speak out about how you see the law, you essentially have to ask prior permission from the state. Under the current regime, the state regulatory agencies and the newspapers basically have a monopoly on information. We’re simply trying to put more free speech in motion.”
*[LOS ANGELES TIMES, 1/4/2012; HUFFINGTON POST, 1/4/2012]
Legal Scholars Anticipate Montana Ruling to be Overturned -
Paul Ryan of the Campaign Legal Center calls the Montana high court’s ruling “an antidote to the crabbed view of corruption” displayed in Citizens United. Ryan, like many others, anticipates the US Supreme Court will overturn today’s ruling. [HUFFINGTON POST, 1/4/2012] One of those others is law professor Richard Hasen, who writes: “[I]f the Court were being honest in Citizens United, it would have said something like: ‘We don’t care whether or not independent spending can or cannot corrupt; the First Amendment trumps this risk of corruption.’ But the Court didn’t say that, because it would have faced even greater criticism than it already has. So it dressed up its value judgment (no corruption ‘implied in law’) as a factual statement. The Montana Supreme Court called SCOTUS [the US Supreme Court] on this. And when SCOTUS reverses, the disingenuousness of this aspect of CU will be on full display for all.” Hasen is referring to the Court’s finding in Citizens United that independent spending in elections does not legally imply corruption. [RICK HASEN, 1/1/2012]
Appeal to Supreme Court - Attorneys for WTP and the other corporate plaintiffs will appeal to the US Supreme Court on the grounds that Montana is bound by the Citizens United decision and that the decision applies to state as well as federal elections. Attorney James Bopp, in filing the appeal, will say: “If Montana can ban core political speech because of Montana’s unique characteristics, free speech will be seriously harmed. Speakers will be silenced because of corruption by others over a century ago.” The US Supreme Court will quickly issue a stay of that decision. [REUTERS, 6/25/2012; OMB WATCH, 6/25/2012]
When the case reaches the US Supreme Court, the name of the plaintiff will change into “American Tradition Partnership,” and the Court’s documentation will reflect that change. The Court will overrule the Montana decision (see June 25, 2012). After the decision, American Tradition Partnership’s Web site will disappear, but the liberal accountability organization SourceWatch will describe the organization’s parent, the American Tradition Institute, as described in the group’s mission statement: “a public policy research and educational foundation… founded in 2009 to help lead the national discussion about environmental issues, including air and water quality and regulation, responsible land use, natural resource management, energy development, property rights, and free-market principles of stewardship.” ATI and its affiliates are pro-development and against expanded environmental regulation, according to SourceWatch’s documentation, made up of “a broader network of groups with close ties to energy interests that have long fought greenhouse gas regulation.” [SOURCEWATCH, 2012]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Tradition_Partnership,Inc.v._Attorney_General_of_Montana#)]
Free Exercise Clause (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Exercise_Clause)
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