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Case Summary for Federal Election Comm. v. Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee

Argued:	February 28, 2001
Decided:	June 25, 2001
Issue:	Freedom of Speech — Whether the Party Expenditure Provision of the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 violates a political party's First Amendment rights by limiting the amount of money a party may spend in coordination with its congressional candidates.
Answer:	No, the Court ruled 5-4 that limits on the coordinated expenditures of political parties did not violate the First Amendment.
Decisions Below:	The opinion of the U.S. District Court is located at 41 F.Supp.2d 1197 (D. Colo. 1999). The opinion of the U.S. Court of Appeals of the 10th Circuit is located at 213 F. 3d 1221 (10th Cir. 2000).
Facts:	In 1986, the Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee paid for several radio ads attacking the voting record of Tim Wirth, the potential Democratic senatorial candidate. The ads ran before the Republican nominee for senator had been selected. The Federal Election Commission (FEC) filed an action alleging that the party had violated the Party Expenditure Provision (PEP) of the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 by exceeding spending limits for political parties. The Colorado Republican Party sued in federal court, claiming that the provision violated the First Amendment. The case eventually reached the United States Supreme Court, which ruled in Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee v. Federal Election Commission, 518 U.S. 604 (1996)("Colorado I") that the provision could not be applied to independent expenditures by political parties. In 1996, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a plurality decision that the PEP was unconstitutional as applied to the particular expenditure at issue. The Court characterized the radio ads as "independent expenditures" (not subject to the PEP) as opposed to "coordinated expenditures." (subject to the PEP) The majority determined the Wirth ads were "independent expenditures" because the chairman of the Colorado Republican Party had approved the ad and had not consulted with the respective Republican candidates. The Colorado I court then remanded the case to the district court for further proceedings with regard to the broader issue of whether the PEP of the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 violates a political party's First Amendment rights by limiting the amount of money a party may spend in "coordination" with its congressional candidates. Four justices in Colorado I (Thomas, Scalia, Kennedy and Rehnquist) ruled that they would have struck down the PEP with regards to both independent and coordinated expenditures. In 1999, the U.S. District Court granted summary judgment to the Colorado Republican Party, ruling that the limits on political parties' coordinated expenditures violated the First Amendment. In May of 2000, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit affirmed. The U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari on Oct. 10, 2000.
Legal Principles:	The First Amendment provides a degree of protection to both spending for political ends and contributing to political candidates. Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1 (1976). There is a constitutionally significant difference between contribution limits and spending limits under Buckley, because the Court determined that the speech interests in campaign contributions are more marginal than the speech interests in spending limits. The government has a substantial interest in reducing corruption and the appearance of corruption in public elections.
Legal Basis:	The Court reasoned that Buckley and its progeny require greater judicial deference to limits on contributions than expenditures. Congress drew a functional line between contributions and expenditures when it sought to limit a political parties' "coordinated expenditures." The Court determined that "there is little evidence to suggest that coordinated party spending limits adopted by Congress have frustrated the ability of political parties to exercise their First Amendment rights to support their candidates." The limit on political parties' coordinated spending is necessary to prevent the circumvention of other contribution limits in campaign finance laws.
Majority:	Souter (joined by Stevens, O'Connor, Ginsburg and Breyer)
Dissent:	Thomas (joined by Scalia, Kennedy and Rehnquist)
Quotable:	"The fault here is not so much metaphysics as myopia, a refusal to see how the power of money actually works in the political structure." (Souter) "Despite years of enforcement of the challenged limits, substantial evidence demonstrates how candidates, donors, and parties test the limits of the current law, and it shows beyond serious doubt how contribution limits would be eroded if inducement to circumvent them were enhanced by declaring parties' coordinated spending wide open." (Souter) "I remain baffled that this Court has extended the most generous First Amendment safeguards to filing lawsuits, wearing profane jackets, and exhibiting drive-in movies with nudity, but has offered only tepid protection to the core speech and associational rights that our Founders sought to defend." (Thomas)

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Case Summary for Dawson v. Delaware

Date Decided:	March 9, 1992
Issue:	Freedom of Association -- Whether a criminal defendant's First Amendment right to freedom of association prevents the prosecution from introducing irrelevant evidence of the defendant's gang membership.
Vote:	Yes, 8-1
Facts:	David Dawson was convicted of first degree murder and various other crimes. During the sentencing hearing, the prosecution introduced evidence that Mr. Dawson was a member of the Aryan Brotherhood, a white racist prison gang. This evidence was not clearly relevant to any other evidence offered by the prosecution or the defense. The trial court ultimately imposed the death penalty. The Delaware Supreme Court affirmed the conviction and sentence.
Legal Principles at Issue:	The First Amendment protects an individual's right to join groups and associate with others holding similar beliefs. Aptheker v. Secretary of State, 378 U.S. 500 (1964). The Constitution, however, does not erect a per se barrier to the admission of relevant evidence concerning one's beliefs and associations at sentencing simply because those beliefs and associations are protected by the First Amendment. United States v. Abel, 469 U.S. 45 (1984).
Legal Basis for Decision:	The Court concluded that the evidence of Mr. Dawson's gang membership was irrelevant to the sentencing proceeding and therefore should not have been allowed. The Court held that evidence proving only a defendant's abstract beliefs cannot be introduced. Prosecutors, however, are able to introduce such evidence if it is otherwise relevant to the proceeding. The Court noted that the Delaware Supreme Court, upon reconsidering the case, might find that the introduction of this evidence was "harmless error" and conclude that a new sentencing hearing was not necessary.
This Case is Important Because:	The Court refused to defer to the lower court rulings that this evidence was relevant and instead stood firmly behind an unpopular defendant's right to freedom of association.
Quotable:	"Regarding the reach of the First Amendment, the dissent correctly points out that it prevents the State from criminalizing certain conduct in the first instance. But it goes further than that. It prohibits a State from denying admission to the bar on the grounds of previous membership in the Communist Party, when there is no connection between that membership and the 'good moral character' required by the State to practice law. It prohibits the State from requiring information from an organization that would infringe on First Amendment associational rights if there is no connection between the information sought and the State's interest. We think that it similarly prevents Delaware here from employing evidence of a defendant's abstract beliefs at a sentencing hearing when those beliefs have no bearing on the issue being tried." (Citations omitted.)
Writing for the Majority:	Chief Justice Rehnquist
Voting with the Majority:	Justices White, Blackmun, Stevens, O'Connor, Scalia, Kennedy, and Souter (Justice Blackmun, concurring)
Writing for the Dissent:	Justice Thomas
Voting with the Dissent:	N/A
Not Voting:	N/A

Case Summary for Cook v. Gralike

Argument Date:	Nov. 6, 2000
Argument Date:	Feb. 28, 2001
Issue:	Freedom of Speech — Whether the 1996 Missouri ballot initiative concerning term limits for members of the United States Congress violates the U.S. Constitution.
Vote:	Yes; the court voted unanimously that the Missouri amendment was unconstitutional with seven justices basing their reasoning on the Elections Clause (U.S. Const. Art. I, § 4, cl. 1). The remaining two justices based their analysis on the First Amendment.
Facts:	In November of 1996, an amendment to the Missouri Constitution was passed which requires members of the state congressional delegation, as well as candidates for those seats, to work and vote for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution setting term limits for members of the U.S. Congress. State congressmen and candidates not abiding by the amendment would have a label ("Disregarded Voters' Instructions on Term Limits" or "Declined to Pledge To Support Term Limits") placed next to their name on election ballots. Don Gralike, a Missouri congressional candidate, filed a challenge to the Amendment against Rebecca Cook, Missouri's secretary of state, in federal court. In January of 1998, the U.S. District Court held in summary judgment for Gralike that the Missouri Amendment was unconstitutional on multiple grounds: First Amendment, Article I (with regard to both the Speech & Debate Clause and the Qualifications Clause), and Article V (Amendment Process). 996 F. Supp. 901 (W. D. Mo. 1998). In August of 1999, the U.S. Court of Appeals (8th Cir.) affirmed the district court's decision and found the Missouri Amendment to be unconstitutional because it violated the First Amendment as well as the other constitutional guarantees noted above. The court also observed that similar initiatives in other states had been invalidated on various state and federal constitutional grounds.
Legal Principles at Issue:	Cook v. Gralike raises issues of sovereignty and federalism in the arena of state elections for federal offices. The constitutionality of the Missouri amendment was challenged as a First Amendment violation (which guarantees freedom of speech), a Speech or Debate Clause violation (which protects the performance of legislative duties by the members of Congress), an Elections Clause violation (which grants the states broad procedural powers in administering state elections for federal offices), and a violation of Art. V (which sets out the process for amending the U.S. Constitution).
Legal Basis for Decision:	Seven of the nine justices analyze the constitutionality of the Missouri amendment as an Elections Clause issue, expressly separating their approach to the case from First Amendment inquiry. The Elections Clause gives states the ability to regulate "[t]he Times, Places, and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives." (U.S. Const., Art. I, § 4, cl. 1). The court finds the Missouri amendment an impermissible attempt to regulate the outcome of the elections rather than a permissible attempt to regulate the time, place, and manner of the elections. Chief Justice Rehnquist, in a concurring opinion that was joined by Justice O'Connor, analyzes the case as part of a line of "ballot access cases based on First Amendment ground." He finds the Missouri amendment to be a clear violation of the First Amendment: "Specifically … [the Missouri amendment] violates the First Amendment right of a political candidate, once lawfully on the ballot, to have his name appear unaccompanied by pejorative language required by the State." Chief Justice Rehnquist states that time, place, and manner regulations of elections are valid if they are content-neutral, narrowly-tailored to address a significant government issue, and provide alternative means for communication of the information. Applying this three-part test Chief Justice Rehnquist finds the Missouri amendment to be content-based and discriminatory on the basis of viewpoint. "The result is that the State injects itself into the election process at an absolutely critical point — the composition of the ballot, which is the last thing the voter sees before he makes his choice — and does so in a way that is not neutral as to issues or candidates."
Quotable:	"In discussing the Elections Clause issue, respondents have also relied in part on First Amendment cases upholding "time, place, and manner" regulations of speech … Although the Elections Clause uses the same phrase as that branch of our First Amendment jurisprudence, it by no means follows that such cases have any relevance to out disposition of this case." (Justice Stevens, Footnote 20) "Specifically, I believe that [the Missouri Amendment] violates the First Amendment right of a potential candidate, once lawfully on the ballot, to have his name appear unaccompanied by pejorative language required by the State." (Chief Justice Rehnquist, concurring) "If other Missouri officials feel strongly about the need for term limits, they are free to urge rejection of candidates who do not share their view and refuse to "take the pledge." Such candidates are able to respond to that sort of speech with speech of their own. But the State itself may not skew the ballot listings in this way without violating the First Amendment." (Chief Justice Rehnquist, concurring)
Writing for the Majority:	Justice Stevens (joined by Scalia, Kennedy, Ginsburg, and Breyer, joined by Souter (as to Parts I, II, and IV), joined by Thomas (as to Parts I and IV)).
Concurring Opinion by:	Justice Kennedy.
Concurring Opinion by:	Justice Thomas.
Concurring Opinion by:	Chief Justice Rehnquist (joined by O'Connor).