The U.S. Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit, will hear Unity08 v Federal Election Commission on October 15, 2009, at 9:30 a.m. The panel consists of Judges Douglas H. Ginsburg, Karen Henderson, and Stephen Williams. The issue is whether the FEC was correct when it told Unity ’08 in 2006 that no one could contribute more than $5,000.

Judges Ginsburg and Henderson were part of the panel that ruled that the U.S. Post Office could not ban petition circulators on post office sidewalks that are parallel to public streets, in 2005. That case was called Initiative & Referendum Institute v U.S. Postal Service. The panel remanded the case back to the U.S. District Court to decide the other half of the case, interior sidewalks, and there is still no decision on that from the U.S. District Court.

Judge Henderson also was one of the judges in McConnell v FEC, and her May 2, 2003 concurring opinion in that case struck down limits on individual contributions to political party national committees (however, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld them later that year in a 5-4 decision).