On January 19, 2007, the 9th circuit issued an opinion in Citizens for Clean Government v City of San Diego, no. 04-56964. San Diego has a $250 contribution limit to candidates for city council. The question was whether the city could enforce this limit against a group that was trying to raise money to hire paid petitioners to circulate a recall petition against a member of the city council.

The U.S. District Court had said the city could limit campaign contributions to a committee that was raising money to hire paid circulators for a recall petition. But the 9th circuit said that this conclusion isn’t necessarily valid, at least in the absense of any hard evidence. The 9th circuit remanded the case back to the U.S. District Court, but made it plain that unless the city can show that someone would be bribed by a policy of allowing unlimited contributions to a recall petition effort, the limit is unconstitutional in that situation.

The whole rationale for campaign contribution limits has been the fear that if campaign contribution limits didn’t exist, wealthy individuals could give a great deal of money to a candidate, hope that candidate got elected, and then expect the candidate (now an office-holder) to do favors for the donor. But contributions to some cause that isn’t trying to elect a particular person are outside the scope of this fear.

The precedent may help to persuade a federal court in Washington, D.C., to overturn a Federal Election Commission ruling, and let Unity08 raise unlimited contributions to finance petition drives to get itself on the ballot. Unity08 has no candidate at this time. No known particular candidate will be helped by such petition drives, especially during an odd year.