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Ron Fein fs 4ppl

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am promise?

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The Trump administration has recently filed motions to strike, or requests that a judge delete sections of lawsuits, in four of American Oversight’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits. This is an unusual tactic, and seems to be part of an effort to delay cases and avoid admitting damaging facts in court.

What are Trump administration lawyers doing?

If the government does not respond to a FOIA request, we often take them to court to get the information we are looking for. Often, our lawsuits begin with a section that includes key background facts about the records we are requesting, to explain why it is important for the public to have access to them.

In four of our recent cases — lawsuits that are seeking records related to the $400 million jetQatar gifted to Donald Trump, the whistleblower allegations that a top official defied court orders to deport a planeful of people to a prison in El Salvador, the FBIreview of Jeffrey Epstein files, and interviews with Trump in the Epstein investigation — the government’s attorneys have asked judges to delete the background facts in our lawsuits. In these cases, they claim this information is “irrelevant” and “scandalous” — even though the information we include is often from government sources.

Here’s a sampling of the information that the administration has attempted to strike:

Why is this so unusual?

Motions to strike are rarely used and judges typically don’t like them.

According to the Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(f), a judge can remove “an insufficient defense or any redundant, immaterial, impertinent, or scandalous matter” in a lawsuit. But even the Trump administration admits in its legal briefings that “motions to strike are generally disfavored.”

Typically, it’s more important for the lawyers and judge to focus on whether the government has violated the law in not releasing requested records. A motion to strike is considered a delay tactic that interferes with that work.

Motions to strike are also considered extreme because they address a relatively minor issue with a “drastic remedy:” permanently deleting entire portions of a lawsuit.

The administration’s arguments for removing text are weak.

The administration’s lawyers have claimed that our complaints include “incendiary” allegations, but the language the administration has attempted to strike includes direct quotes from administration officials and reporting from reputable outlets.

We include this background information in our complaints because it is relevant to the case. This information can help us demonstrate why we need the documents as fast as possible, if the government’s search for records was sufficient, why the government’s justification for withholding documents is wrong, and why the government should have to pay our attorney fees.

So far, two federal judges already agree with us. In our lawsuit for records related to the FBI’s review of the Epstein files, Judge James Boasberg found that we “largely quote[d] administration officials” and that is “hardly scandalous or prejudicial.” Judge Boasberg ruled that it was best to keep the case moving by not requiring us to delete anything from our lawsuit. In our lawsuit for any interviews conducted with Trump as part of the Epstein investigation, Judge Timothy Kelly denied the motion to strike. We mostly “simply allege[d] that administration officials made certain publicly reported statements or took certain publicly reported actions,” he wrote. “And the allegations themselves are hardly scandalous or prejudicial.”

Why are government lawyers using this tactic?

The motions to strike are an attempt to avoid admitting damaging facts in court.

As part of a court case, defense lawyers are required to say whether the allegations in a lawsuit are true. That can include confirming or denying the information we include in our complaint.

In other words, a government attorney could be asked to confirm or deny reports about what’s going on in the Trump administration. Doing either of those things can put an attorney in a difficult situation. If the lawyers deny information that is accurate, they could face sanctions or even disbarment. If they confirm or correct facts they’re also at risk, especially if those facts could be embarrassing to the administration. For example, in a hearing regarding the wrongful removal of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, DOJ attorney Erez Reuveni confirmed that Abrego Garcia’s removal was an error. Later that night, the DOJ ordered Reuveni to file a brief that distorted that the removal was a mistake. After he declined, he was placed on administrative leave.

Asking the judge to strike these factual statements from our court cases could help government attorneys sidestep the issue.

Motions to strike also allow the Trump administration to delay responding to the substance of our lawsuits.

Our lawsuits argue that the government broke the law — specifically the Freedom of Information Act. The government has to respond to our lawsuit and argue that it didn’t do anything illegal — or, as is most often the case when we sue, the government must admit that it didviolate FOIA.

DOJ attorneys have their hands full defending a wide range of illegal Trump administration actions, such as deadly use of force by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and the National Guard’s unlawful deployment to suppress peaceful protests. In some cases, a motion to strike might be a cheat code that gives the attorneys more time.

Instead of writing a detailed response straightforwardly addressing the allegations in our complaint, the DOJ attorneys can move to strike the sections included for context. That stops the case from moving forward until the judge makes a decision. Even if the judge eventually rejects their motion to strike — as Judge Boasberg and Judge Kelly did — the Trump administration attorneys bought themselves more time to write their briefs.

Luckily, the Trump administration’s attorneys have yet to be successful with this ploy. We will continue to fight against these delay tactics and push for the release of public records that could help hold the administration accountable.

Read more about the Trump administration’s use of motions to strike in Salon.

brian email 11 24

This election cycle, our democracy has been staggered by blow after blow. We cannot pretend otherwise; to do so would be to accept that this hamstrung system is the one with which we must live. It is not and we do not accept that it is. We will keep fighting for our democracy.

So we face the facts. We know Donald Trump, twice impeached and responsible for inciting an insurrection when he lost the 2020 election, was declared the President-Elect following the 2024 election. We know that he is disqualified to hold this office under the Insurrectionist Disqualification Clause of the U.S. Constitution, but was permitted to remain on the ballot because of a corrupt and broken Supreme Court. We know that he infused his campaign with violent, racist rhetoric that to at least some of his supporters is a feature, not a bug.

We know that Trump and Harris raised a combined $2.7 billion, with more than $1 billion coming from super PACs and other sources outside of their official campaigns. We know that for all federal elections, outside expenditures exceeded $4.5 billion, shattering previous records set in 2020. We also know that the majority of that spending came from super PACs.

We know that, in the shadow of Trump’s repeated threats against a free press, billionaire-owned newspapers refused to endorse a candidate over the opposition of staff. We know that social media platforms are flooded with disinformation and that our access to the words of others—whether they be friends, journalists, or anyone else—is subject to the whims of algorithms designed to maximize profit over truth.

We know that Trump—currently facing multiple federal criminal charges for interfering with the 2020 election and stealing classified documents—is unlikely to be prosecuted while he holds office, and that the Supreme Court has granted him immunity for crimes arising from his “official acts.” We know that he was in violation of the emoluments clause when he took office in 2017 and is poised to remain in violation of the emoluments clause when he takes office again in 2025.

We know that our judicial branch is mired in corruption and partisan scandals that have been uncovered not by official investigation but by journalists—all without consequence. We know that the Supreme Court and lower courts across the country continue to render decisions that erode voting rights and anti-corruption laws.

Big money in politics does not and cannot coexist with political equality. Free speech should not be a zero-sum game. But in the hands of oligarchs and the politicians and judges who rely on them, that is what it has become. Where money has been given the status of speech and corporations the status of people, where our mechanisms of sharing speech and knowledge is shaped by profit maximization, then some voices can and do silence others. This is dangerous on its face, and it is particularly dangerous where, as we see now in our country, powerful voices are targeting marginalized and vulnerable communities. They do so in order to foment racist, violent support for their causes, to intimidate those who oppose them, and to make it seem as if silence in the face of oppression is the safest course.

It is not. It may be the safest course for billionaire newspaper owners and profit-maximizing social media companies, but it is not the safest course for the people of this country or for the United States. We know this. We know that our democracy will not be saved by accepting its billionaire/corporate capture as fait accompli. And we know that there are elected officials, judges, grassroots organizers, journalists, lawyers, institutions, and ordinary people all across the nation who remain committed to our democracy—including those voters in Maine who overwhelmingly voted to abolish super PACs in elections in their state.

With this knowledge—the good and the bad—Free Speech For People remains committed to its ongoing fight to protect our democracy and our elections for people and not corporations and to lift up the promise of political equality for all. We will continue to demand accountability from our judges and our elected officials, including the President. We will carry on our work to challenge big money in politics and unchecked corporate power, and we will celebrate every step that moves us closer to an equitable, just, democratic society.

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ymail 3 24

Posted on March 4, 2024

CHALLENGING CORRUPTION

The U.S. Supreme Court today has made a mockery of Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

The Supreme Court has ruled that–despite inciting and facilitating a violent insurrection that defeated federal law enforcement, conquered the seat of our national government, nearly assassinated the vice president and key congressional leaders, and blocked Congress from certifying his electoral defeat, thus disrupting the peaceful transfer of power for the first time in our nation’s history–the disgraced ex-president Donald Trump can run for office again because this critical provision of the Constitution, designed to prevent exactly this situation, cannot be enforced.

Under Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment, “No person shall . . . hold any office, civil or military, under the United States. . . who, having previously taken an oath, . . . as an officer of the United States. . ., to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.” Every court and state official that has addressed that issue — in Colorado, Maine, and Illinois — concluded that Trump engaged in insurrection and is disqualified from the presidency.

The Supreme Court did not deny that Trump engaged in insurrection; indeed, during a nearly three hour oral argument on February 8, 2024, neither Trump’s lawyer nor any of the Justices seriously disputed that conclusion. Instead, the Court ruled that states’ power to appoint presidential electors–which the Court has previously described as “far-reaching” and “plenary”–does not allow them to apply this critical provision of the Constitution to presidential candidates. As of today, states can exclude a presidential candidate from the ballot because he did not submit the proper paperwork with the proper number of verified signatures, but notbecause he fomented a bloody insurrection against the U.S. Constitution.

This decision is disgraceful,” said Ron Fein, Legal Director of Free Speech For People, which pioneered the first litigation under Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment and co-led the successful Illinois challenge. “The Supreme Court couldn’t exonerate Trump because the evidence of his guilt was overwhelming, so instead the Justices neutered our Constitution’s built-in defense against insurrectionists and said the facts don’t matter.

This dangerous ruling encourages Trump–and those who follow his example–to engage in more insurrections and disregard more broadly the Constitution. As one Senator explained in 1866 when advocating for Section 3, “the man who has once violated his oath will be more liable to violate his fealty to the Government in the future.” The framers of the Fourteenth Amendment learned this lesson in blood, and gave us Section 3 to prevent a repeat. With today’s ruling, the Supreme Court has utterly failed in its duty to uphold this constitutional mandate at this critical moment in history.

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y mail 6 23

Today, U.S. Representative Jim McGovern introduced the Free and Fair Elections Amendment, which would overturn Citizens United and reclaim our democracy. In doing so, it would uphold the fundamental promise of political equality for all. And unlike other amendments that would merely allow Congress to pass federal campaign finance legislation (which it might not do) for federal elections, the Free and Fair Elections Amendment directly imposes these key elements in the amendment itself without any further action from Congress. 

https://freespeechforpeople.org/the-free-and-fair-elections-amendment/

:{:{free Speech For People has developed the }::{Free and Fair Elections Amendment}::{ to end the big money dominance of our elections. This proposed amendment sets limits on federal campaign contributions and spending; prohibits corporate spending in the political process (as existed prior to the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United v. FEC); requires Congress to develop a system of public campaign financing for all federal candidates who qualify for the ballot; and allows the States to set reasonable limits on campaign contributions and spending in state and local elections. The amendment overturns Citizens United and other Supreme Court rulings which have so threatened our democracy.}:

We also endorse the Democracy For All Amendment (S.J. Res. 51; H.J. Res. 2), which allows Congress and the States to set limits on campaign contributions and spending,

and we endorse the We the People Amendment (H.J. Res. 48) which states, in part, that Congress shall regulate campaign contributions and spending. We believe the Free and Fair Elections Amendment is preferable because it will establish, upon enactment, key contribution and spending limits and it will ensure a strong public financing system for all federal candidates who qualify for the ballot, thereby leveling the playing field for candidates regardless of their access to wealth.

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~ trump 2024

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/07/us/politics/trump-election-insurrection.html

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4 22

Free Speech For People just filed, on behalf of Arizona voters, lawsuits challenging the candidacies of Paul Gosar, Andy Biggs, & Mark Finchem

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sad!

https://www.alternet.org/2022/03/cawthorn-2656854718/

salon78

A federal judge on Friday struck down a legal challenge against Rep. Madison Cawthorn, R-N.C., who a group of North Carolina voters argued was ineligible for re-election due to his apparent role in fomenting the January 6 Capitol riot.

The decision was handed down by Judge Richard Myers, a Trump-appointee in the eastern district of North Carolina, who rubber stamped Cawthorn's request for a preliminary injunction against the petitioners.

Myers is a member of two conservative advocacy groups, including the Federalist Society and the National Rifle Association. He also serves as a faculty advisor for the Christian Legal Society, whose members profess to be "dedicated to serving Jesus Christ through the practice and study of law."

The case originally stems from a lawsuit filed by a group of voters and advocacy groups back in January, alleging that Cawthorn should be disqualified from re-election over his conduct before and during the Capitol insurrection

In the leadup to the insurrection, Cawthorn encouraged his followers to "lightly threaten" their representatives if they didn't validate Donald Trump's baseless claims of election fraud. The conservative firebrand also made an appearance at the "Stop the Steal" rally, held just hours before the riot, where he blasted Republicans for "not fighting" hard enough. When the rioters had finally made their way inside the House chamber, Cawthorn appeared to be brimming with pride over Twitter, writing gleefully that "the battle is on the house floor."

The lawsuit, now all but dead, hangs its hat on the 14th Amendment's "disqualification clause," which prohibits any officeholders who "engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same" from holding a seat in government.

[twt]

but in a countersuit filed in February, Cawthorn's lawyers argued that the Amnesty Act of 1872 – which allowed ex-Confederates to serve in office after the Civil War – effectively validates Cawthorn's re-election bid. In fact, that law only applied to ex-Confederates – not future insurrectionists, Slate's Mark Joseph Stern noted.

Still, Myers sided with Cawthorn's abstruse logic, claiming that "we are at a moment in which interest in free and fair elections is at its peak." The judge added that he felt too responsible for protecting "the soapbox … the ballot box … and the jury box … And when those fail, that's when people proceed to the ammunition box."

Rob Fein, the legal director of Free Speech For People, which is representing the voters who filed the suit against Cawthorn, has called for the decision to be appealed.

"This ruling, by Chief Judge Richard Myers II, a Trump appointee, is wrong on the law and would block the State Board of Elections from determining whether Cawthorn is ineligible under the Insurrectionist Disqualification Clause of the US Constitution," he said in a statement. "The ruling must be reversed on appeal, and the right of voters to bring this challenge to Cawthorn's eligibility must be preserved.

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https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/madison-cawthorn-lawyer-cites-confederate-amnesty-act-to-defend-reps-job-capitol-insurrection

a lawyer for Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC) cited an 1872 congressional action granting amnesty to Confederate soldiers to defend his own client’s eligibility for office. 

The argument from Cawthorn lawyer James Bopp Jr. came in response to a legal effort to have Cawthorn declared ineligible for office because he allegedly “encouraged, and upon reasonable suspicion helped aid, the insurrection” on Jan. 6.

The legal challenge, from a group of North Carolina voters backed by the organization Free Speech For People, alleges that Cawthorn violated the third section of the 14th Amendment, which states, “No Person shall be a […] Representative in Congress […] who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress […] to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same.”

On the phone with TPM Wednesday, Bopp said “there are substantial constitutional defenses, which include the fact that Congress passed the 1872 Amnesty Act, which removed all persons whatsoever from the disability under Section 3 as a result of engaging in an insurrection or rebellion."

tho the Amnesty Act applied at the time to Confederate soldiers who fought in the Civil War, nothing in the law prevented it from being applied in the future, Bopp argued.

“There’s nothing in the Amnesty Act that says it’s only applicable to the Civil War, and it was very broad in its terms,” he said.

Ron Fein, legal director for Free Speech For People, told TPM in a statement that “Mr. Bopp’s argument is contradicted by history and common sense.” 

“In the congressional debates leading up to the 14th amendment, Congress considered but rejected a draft of section 3 that only applied to ‘the late insurrection,’ i.e., the Civil War; in other words, Congress explicitly wrote section 3 to apply to future insurrections,” Fein said. “In the entire public and congressional debate leading to the 1872 amnesty, no one ever mentioned Mr. Bopp’s idea of future amnesty for insurrectionists who hadn’t even been born yet.”

“If Congress had intended through the 1872 amnesty to enact a de facto repeal of a constitutional amendment that it had just passed, you would have expected someone to have mentioned this at the time,” he added. Bopp first commented about the Amnesty Act to The New York Times Tuesday.

A Bid To Disqualify Right-Wing Reps

Free Speech for People has made no secret of the fact that it plans on challenging the eligibility of other members of Congress.

But North Carolina law is especially useful for challengers of Cawthorn’s eligibility: It puts the burden on candidates to demonstrate, “by a preponderance of the evidence of the record as a whole that he or she is qualified to be a candidate for the office.” (For now, the challenge to Cawthorn’s eligibility has been delayed by the legal fight over redistricting in the state.) 

The challengers noted that Cawthorn was reportedly in touch with event planners behind the Jan. 6 White House rally, which preceded the attack on Congress. He also encouraged attendees at one December 2020 speech to “lightly threaten” their congressional representatives. Two days before the Capitol attack, he tweeted that the fate of the country hinged “on the actions of a solitary few.”

“Get ready, the fate of a nation rests on our shoulders, yours and mine,” Cawthorn wrote. “Let’s show Washington that our backbones are made of steel and titanium. It’s time to fight.”

On Jan. 6 itself, Cawthorn spoke to the crowd at the White House event that preceded the riot.

“The Democrats, with all the fraud they have done this election, the Republicans, hiding and not fighting, they are trying to silence your voice,” he said, after observing that “this crowd has some fight.”

After the attack began, but before insurrectionists breached the Capitol building itself, Cawthorn tweeted, “I’m fighting a battle for our Constitution on the house floor with other patriots. The battle is on the house floor, not in the streets of D.C.”

Insurrectionist Under Law?

Bopp argued to TPM that these actions did not amount to partaking in an insurrection. The 14th Amendment’s use of “engaged” to define participation in an insurrection did not apply here, he said.

He accused Cawthorn’s challengers of “weaponizing” what occurred on Jan. 6 “to subvert our democracy by preventing qualified people from running for office.”

“It wasn’t an insurrection, it wasn’t a rebellion by any sensible definition of those words, and Cawthorn was on the floor of Congress when it occurred doing his official duties, so he wasn’t ‘engaged’ in any of it,” he said.

The challenge may be a bit of a longshot, as several legal observers have acknowledged, but it could also force Cawthorn to speak more about what role he had, if any, in organizing some part of the Jan. 6 event schedule.

“If it turns out that there are proper procedures lawfully being employed that result in a deposition, he’ll deal with that when that occurs,” Bopp said. But, he added, “I seriously doubt that we’ll get to that point.”

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1 22 yahoo mail

**North Carolina voters challenge Rep. Madison Cawthorn’s candidacy for re-election under Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment.**

The challenge, filed before the North Carolina State Board of Elections, alleges that Cawthorn is constitutionally disqualified from public office under Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, based on reasonable suspicion that he helped facilitate the January 6th insurrection. This is the first such challenge to candidate eligibility filed since the Reconstruction era.

In the weeks leading up to January 6th, Cawthorn publicly urged his followers to threaten and intimidate Members of Congress into blocking certification of 2020 election results. As the date approached, Cawthorn or his staff were in close contact with organizers for the “Save America” demonstration, in which Trump incited his supporters to “walk down to the Capitol” and “fight like hell.” Cawthorn’s speeches, tweets, and other public statements establish reasonable suspicion that he helped plan the demonstration and/or march with advance knowledge of the violent attack. Furthermore, his speeches since then suggest that he continues to endorse political violence as a tool for intimidation.

Free Speech For People is proud to represent these voters upholding our Constitution and defending our democracy in the face of the ongoing threat Cawthorn and his allies pose to our republic. But we can’t succeed without your support....

==

re clements, who ref

http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2014/10/06/the-fight-for-living-wages-is-for-workers-not-corporations/

ron fein oct 2014

Industry trade groups are now challenging Seattle’s new minimum wage law as unconstitutional. They claim the city’s $15 an hour rate violates the 14th Amendment. Passed just after the Civil War to ensure equal rights for the newly freed slaves, that amendment says no state may “deny to any person . . . the equal protection of the laws.”

According to the industry lawsuit, the minimum wage law violates this Equal Protection Clause because it phases in the higher wage at a different schedule for franchised companies than for small local businesses.

But the trade groups’ argument twists the real intent of the 14th Amendment. Its drafters had a special interest in whether workers could earn “fair, living wages,” our research has revealed. That phrase was often used by Senator Jacob Howard, a staunch Republican who served as the 14th Amendment’s Senate floor manager in 1866.

During congressional hearings, Howard repeatedly asked witnesses whether employers were paying the newly freed slaves “fair, living wages.”

Howard had reason to emphasize this point. Even before the Civil War ended, the Union Army was deeply concerned about whether freedmen were receiving fair wages. An 1865 Army work plan, for example, instructed officers to assist freedmen in obtaining “fair wages for their labor.”

Sometimes it was a struggle to achieve this. When employers in two recalcitrant South Carolina counties persisted in underpaying the freedmen, one Army general contemplated moving those counties’ entire freed population to areas that would pay them “fair wages.” By 1866, a special military unit established to assist freedmen during the post-Civil War Reconstruction had resorted to distributing standard labor contracts, with fixed labor rates, that would promote “prosperous relations between capital and labor” and be “satisfactory to the freedmen.”

Many Americans viewed “fair, living wages” as an integral part of the struggle from slavery to full citizenship. The influential abolitionist editor Horace Greeley — famous for his 1865 editorial that advised “Go West, young man” — wrote a widely reprinted open letter to “the Colored People of North Carolina” on September 14, 1865. He urged them to take immediate steps to demand “fair, living wages” as part of their larger struggle for equal rights.

So when members of the special congressional committee asked whether freedmen could earn fair or living wages, they understood the issue as intimately connected with the equality that the 14th Amendment ultimately enshrined.

That wasn’t the only concern behind the 14th Amendment, of course. But, unlike protection of the economic advantages that franchised businesses have over small local businesses, it was part of the 14th Amendment’s overall goals.

Given how important obtaining “fair, living wages” was to the 14th Amendment’s authors, industry lawyers have no basis to argue that the Equal Protection Clause protects the companies, rather than the workers. But it’s not surprising. Ever since the 14th Amendment was passed, corporate lawyers have tried to leverage it to strike down laws like Seattle’s.

In 1938, a frustrated Supreme Court justice complained that of the cases in the court in which the 14th Amendment was applied during the first 50 years after its adoption, “less than one-half of 1 percent invoked it in protection of the negro race, and more than 50 percent asked that its benefits be extended to corporations.”

Just this year, the Equal Protection Clause has been invoked on behalf of coal companies and multinational agribusiness conglomerates.

We need to put a stop to this unfounded constitutional argument. The businesses had their opportunity to make their case to the city of Seattle — and they lost. They shouldn’t be allowed to run to court under the banner of the 14th Amendment.

When Abraham Lincoln was just a rookie congressman, he wrote that securing “to each laborer the whole product of his labor, or as nearly as possible, is a most worthy object of any good government.” That’s what Seattle’s law does. Sixteen years after Lincoln wrote that, he vowed at Gettysburg to preserve a “government of the people, by the people, [and] for the people.” That’s what the industry’s lawsuit threatens.

The congressmen of Reconstruction sought to carry forward Lincoln’s legacy with the 14th Amendment. Their vision of full equality is not yet realized. But if they could see what Seattle is trying to achieve, they would be proud.

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Big news, Patrick -- yesterday, we filed our opening brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in Lieu v. FEC. 

This was an important step on the path to getting the court to review the notorious SpeechNow v. FEC decision for the first time since 2010 -- and potentially overturn it.

Here’s the back story: SpeechNow.org v. FEC was the case that originally unleashed super PACs on our democracy. For nearly a decade, the SpeechNowruling has allowed big money donors to evade federal campaign contribution limits and further corrupt our political process. 

Many scholars and constitutional law experts said that the ruling was legally erroneous at the time, and U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts has even given signals that suggest he would be willing to sustain limits on contributions to super PACs. 

Lieu v. FECis our opportunity. Filed in federal district court on behalf of a bipartisan coalition of Members of Congress and 2016 congressional candidates, the case seeks the reversal of the SpeechNow.org v. FEC ruling. And yesterday’s opening brief pushes it along on its journey! 

:{

}:

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Free Speech For People Legal Advocacy Program mailing address:

634 Commonwealth Ave. #209

Newton, MA 02459

Free Speech For People Legal Advocacy Program by phone, please call: 617-244-0234

Ron Fein  4/15 good

Hi - pleased to hear from you, and keep up the good work.

Our co-founder, Jeff Clements, speaks widely on this, but he was just in SF in February: https://acslaw.secure.force.com/rsvp?id=a0YG0000007sL3zMAE

I don’t have any plans to be in the Bay Area anytime soon, but I’ll see if I can think of anyone who’s local there who might be good. I’m not sure about Steve Mayer - you’re welcome to try, but the nature of his involvement in the Prop 49 brief was limited to the question of whether ballot measures can contain advisory questions, not the topic of corporate constitutional rights. I honestly have no idea what his thoughts are on that.

In the meantime, just tell these lawyers “associational standing - see NAACP v. Alabama ex rel Patterson.” It’s a decision from before the widespread expansion of corporate constitutional rights that’s strikingly similar to the Planned Parenthood hypo. The Supreme Court held that the NAACP couldn’t raise any constitutional claims of its own against the state’s demand for its membership lists, but it could assert claims on behalf of its members, whose freedom of association was jeopardized by the state’s order. This logic wouldn’t apply to most for-profit corporations: Exxon shareholders aren’t “associating” when they buy Exxon stock.

april 23

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NAACP_v._Alabama

National Association for the Advancement of Colored People v. Alabama, 357 U.S. 449 (1958), was an important civil rights case brought before the United States Supreme Court.

Alabama sought to prevent the NAACP from conducting further business in the state. After the circuit court issued a restraining order, the state issued a subpoena for various records, including the NAACP's membership lists. The Supreme Court ruled that Alabama's demand for the lists had violated the right of due process guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Contents

Facts

In 1956, the Attorney General of Alabama, John Patterson, brought a suit to the State Circuit Court of Montgomery, Alabama, challenging the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) for violation of a state statute requiring foreign corporations to qualify before doing business in the state. The NAACP, a nonprofit membership corporation based in New York, had not complied with the statute, as it believed it was exempt. The state suit sought both to prevent the Association from conducting further business within the state and, indeed, to remove it from the state.

Referring to the Association's involvement with the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955 and its role in funding and providing legal assistance to black students' seeking admission to the state university, the suit charged that the Association was ". . . causing irreparable injury to the property and civil rights of the residents and citizens of the State of Alabama for which criminal prosecution and civil actions at law afford no adequate relief . . . ." On the day this suit was filed, the circuit court agreed to issue an ex parte order restraining the Association from conducting business in the state or taking steps to qualify it to do so.

The Association, represented throughout by Robert L. Carter of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, responded by moving to dissolve the order on the grounds that its activities within the state did not require its qualification under the statute and that the state's suit was intended to violate its rights to freedom of speech and of assembly as guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States. Before a hearing date was set, the state issued a subpoena for much of the Association's records, including bank statements and leases, but most notably the names and addresses of the "agents" or "members" of the Association in Alabama.

...

Judgment

In an opinion delivered by Justice John Marshall Harlan II, the Supreme Court decided in favor of the petitioners, holding that "Immunity from state scrutiny of petitioner's membership lists is here so related to the right of petitioner's members to pursue their lawful private interests privately and to associate freely with others in doing so as to come within the protection of the Fourteenth Amendment" and, further, that freedom to associate with organizations dedicated to the "advancement of beliefs and ideas" is an inseparable part of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The action of the state's obtaining the names of the Association's membership would likely interfere with the free association of its members, so the state's interest in obtaining the records was superseded by the constitutional rights of the petitioners.[1] Harlan said the following.

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