On May 26, a U.S. District Court ruled that the First Amendment protects the ability of corporations and unions to make contributions to candidates for federal office, up to the same limit that applies to individuals. Here is the 52-page opinion, United States v Danielczyk, 1:11cr85, written by Judge James Cacheris, a semi-retired Reagan appointee.
Two individuals are being criminally prosecuted for reimbursing their employees for the money they spent to buy tickets to a fund-raiser for Hillary Clinton. Federal law says, “No person shall make a contribution in the name of another person.” All the pages in the decision prior to page 42 deal with the Defendants’ arguments that that law doesn’t apply to them. The decision rebuts those arguments, and upholds those parts of the indictment. But because count four of the charges against the Defendants alleges that they also broke the law that bans corporations from donating to candidates to federal office, the judge had to deal specially with that count. The judge ruled that it is unconstitutional to ban corporate donations to candidates (up to the relatively low limit that applies to individual donations) and struck count four from the indictment. That part of the decision is short and is on pages 42-46.
The famous Citizens United decision from the U.S. Supreme only struck down the ban on corporations and unions making independent expenditures. However, people who don’t like the Citizens United decision constantly say that decision struck down the limits on donations. For example, the New York Times of May 26 has an editorial that says, “Uber-PACs will compound the damage of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision that overturned restrictions against unlimited corporate donations.” That sentence is false. But because the New York Times and other critics of the Citizens United decision has alleged so many times that Citizens United applies to donations, these voices have inadvertently led the public to believe that corporations can already make donations, so the Danielczyk decision won’t appear very newsworthy.
