On July 19, a U.S. District Court transmitted the relevant documents, including approximately 70 pages of undisputed facts, to the U.S. Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit, for the lawsuit Libertarian National Committee v Federal Election Commission. This is the case on whether the U.S. Constitution protects the ability of a political party to receive a large donation from a deceased individual, and to get the bequest all at once. The FEC takes the position that individual limits on contributions to political parties must be maintained, even if the donor has died and even though the evidence shows that the donor did not attempt to influence the party when he or she planned the bequest.
The Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971, as amended in 1974, set contribution limits on individuals who give to federal candidates and to political parties. Congress considered the issues involving this law so important, that it wrote into the law a provision that constitutional challenges to the act must be handled by the entire U.S. Court of Appeals judges, sitting en banc. This means that all of the U.S. Court of Appeals judges in the D.C. circuit must interrupt their normal activity and convene as a body to hear the challenge. The law also says that only substantial lawsuits should receive this treatment, however. It has taken the Libertarian Party two years even to get into this en banc panel. This will be the first time the D.C. Circuit has convened all its judges to hear a case involving a minor political party, if there were no major parties also in the case.
