PRESS RELEASES from Institute for Justice

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:  January 18, 2012
CONTACT:     John Kramer

Institute for Justice Defends Super PACs

Americans Should Embrace Groups That Speak During Elections, Not Fear Them

Arlington, Va.—The 2012 presidential election is bringing almost daily warnings about the influence of so-called “Super PACs” on the political process.  A writer in The Atlantic called them the “WMDs” of campaign finance and to The New York Times they are “septic tanks into which wealthy individuals and corporations can drop unlimited amounts of money.”  The attorneys at the Institute for Justice, who argued and won SpeechNow.org v. FEC, the case that recognized that the First Amendment prohibits the government from preventing the formation of Super PACs, have a very different view.

Super PACs are voluntary associations that engage in political speech in campaigns for federal office.  They do not make contributions to candidates.  Rather, they make what are referred to as “independent expenditures”—spending on political speech in support of, or opposition to, a candidate for federal office.  If this political spending is made independently from a candidate, the Super PAC may accept unlimited contributions from individuals, associations, corporations and unions.

“Independent expenditure-only groups—or so-called ‘Super PACs’—are organizations made up of Americans who have joined together, pooled their resources and are attempting to persuade voters,” said IJ Senior Attorney Steve Simpson, who argued SpeechNow.org.  “These groups are simply exercising their First Amendment rights to speak out about politics in the course of a campaign.”

Many commentators claim that Super PACs, because of their ability to raise and spend unlimited amounts of money, can dominate politics and “buy” elections.  “Political advertising does not buy elections any more than corporate advertising buys market share,” Simpson continued.  “If it did, we would all be driving American cars and drinking New Coke.  Ross Perot would have been elected President.”

“When people complain that there is too much spending in campaigns, they are really complaining that there is too much political speech in campaigns,” Simpson said.  “More spending means more information reaching voters about their political representatives.”

Moreover, independent spending can backfire—the most recent example being a film made by a Super PAC supporting Newt Gingrich that criticized Mitt Romney’s business record.  “The idea that voters will simply do as advertising directs them to do is nonsense,” Simpson said.

“Many of the most vehement complaints regarding Super PACs come from political candidates themselves,” said IJ Attorney Bill Maurer, who argued a successful challenge to Arizona’s punitive system of taxpayer financing of campaigns before the U.S. Supreme Court last year.  “Candidates cannot control the messages from independent expenditure groups and, ironically, contribution limits make it hard for candidates to respond by limiting the money they can raise.  But the answer to this inequality is to lift contribution limits, not to violate the First Amendment in a more even-handed fashion.”

Many members of the media—including Stephen Colbert—repeatedly point out that Super PACs, which are supposed to be independent, are often run by associates or friends of candidates, raising concerns that they are not truly independent.  “Super PACs are required to be independent, but they aren’t required to be ineffective,” said IJ Attorney Paul Sherman.  “The campaign finance reform lobby created a system that pushes money to third-party groups.  Donors are naturally going to want to give money to groups that will spend it on effective political advocacy.  Of course those groups are going to be run by people with extensive experience in politics.  If reformers find that system absurd, they have no one to blame but themselves.”

Simpson concluded, “The problem is not that there’s too much money in politics, but that politics controls too much money.  If we want to keep people from trying to influence politics, we need to keep politicians from influencing everything we do.  Shrink the size and scope of government, and you remove the incentive to try to control it.”

Maurer concluded, “It seems like every election, those pushing for more restrictions and campaign finance regulations come up with a new boogeyman that is supposedly destroying democracy.  A few years ago it was 527 organizations and before that ‘soft money’; today it is Super PACs.  What they are really complaining about is that people are spending money to get their political viewpoints heard.  In the view of those pushing campaign finance restriction, this spending is corruption; what it really is, is free speech in action.”

#  #  #


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:  January 18, 2012
CONTACT:     John Kramer

Citizens United, Two Years Later: Institute for Justice Continues to Defend Landmark Free Speech Ruling

“The irony here is that people and groups are gathering together to speak out against a case
that protected the right of people and groups to gather together and speak out.
We don’t lose our freedom of speech by exercising our freedom of association.”

Arlington, Va.—Tomorrow, January 21, 2012, marks the second anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in Citizens United v. FEC.  As proponents of campaign finance restrictions prepare to protest the decision, the Institute for Justice (IJ), the nation’s only libertarian public interest law firm, is standing up to defend that ruling.

Citizens United recognized that the First Amendment is about protecting speech, not about protecting favored speakers,” said IJ Senior Attorney Steve Simpson, who authored the friend-of-the-court brief IJ submitted in Citizens United v. FEC.  “Congress has no more power to ban speech by American corporations than it does to ban speech from any American who wishes to add his voice to the political debate.”

Opponents of Citizens United commonly argue that the decision is flawed because it held that “corporations are people.”  But as Simpson noted, “Citizens United simply recognized that corporations are associations of people—and those real people don’t lose their First Amendment rights merely because they associate with one another to make their speech more effective.”

“Simply put,” Simpson said, “if individuals have free speech rights, citizens who band together as unions and corporations also have free speech rights.  We don’t lose our freedom of speech by exercising our freedom of association.”

Simpson continued, “The irony here is that people and groups are gathering together to speak out against a case that protected the right of people and groups to gather together and speak out.”

Opponents of Citizens United also claim that the ruling held that “money is speech.”  But, as IJ-WA Executive Director Bill Maurer noted, “The Supreme Court did not hold that money is speech, but that money facilitates speech.  If Congress can control the amount of money you can spend on speech, then it can ban any speech that carries beyond the sound of your own voice.”

Maurer continued, “The critics of Citizens United ultimately have a problem with the First Amendment and the fact that it prevents the government from placing caps on political speech.  They want regulated speech, rather than a free marketplace of ideas.  And for some reason, they trust the government to set and enforce strict limits on how much speech occurs in a debate about, of all things, who should govern us.  This viewpoint is completely inconsistent with our nation’s history and flies in the face of long-established constitutional rights as well as limits on the power of government.”

IJ Attorney Paul Sherman added, “Absent from almost every attack on Citizens United is any description of what the case was actually about.  At its core, Citizens United concerned a law that gave the federal government the power to fine or imprison people if they used money from a corporate or union treasury to pay for political speech.  The government was literally asserting the power to ban the distribution of a political documentary and even pamphlets or books.  Nothing could be more antithetical to the First Amendment.”

Simpson concluded, “In our society, the government has no place limiting certain voices because they might prove too influential.  The Framers recognized that individuals, not the government, have the right to decide what to say and what messages to listen to.  Those who believe in freedom should defend Citizens United.  If we ignore freedom of speech, we will surely lose it.”

For more information on Citizens United, Super PACs, and other campaign finance issues, visit IJ’s First Amendment blog, Congress Shall Make No Law, at www.makenolaw.org.

#  #  #