Congress has long made it illegal for public broadcasting stations to sell advertising. On December 2, an en banc panel of the Ninth Circuit overruled a 3-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit, and upheld the federal law. The case had been brought by a public television station that wants to sell advertising, including issue advertising and also advertising by candidates. Here is the opinion. Thanks to Rick Hasen for this news.
The Independent Voter Project of California, one of the groups that intervened in every court case challenging any detail of California’s top-two system, is somewhat well-known for hosting annual weekly meetings for some California legislators. The most recent such event was last month. John Hrabe has an article about the meeting at Calnewsroom, an on-line source for news about California politics and government.
The focus of John Hrabe’s article is that the Independent Voter Project refuses to identify the state legislators who attend its event, which is held at the Fairmont Kea Lani, one of Hawaii’s most luxurious resorts. Hrabe’s article also links to other news stories on the same subject. UPDATE: see this December 4 article, in which two Democratic State Senators voluntarily revealed that they had attended the session.
On December 2, the U.S. Supreme Court revealed it will not hear Nader v Federal Election Commission, 13-556. The issue was whether Nader had standing to sue the FEC for its failure to enforce campaign finance laws. Specifically, the Democratic National Committee and its allies did not report their expenses in attempting to keep Nader off the ballot in 2004 in two dozen states, and the FEC did virtually nothing to enforce the law. The U.S. Court of Appeals ruled Nader doesn’t even have standing to sue the FEC.
This is the last chapter in the many lawsuits filed around Nader’s 2004 ballot access legal fights.
The U.S. Supreme Court has placed Libertarian Party of Michigan v Ruth Johnson, 13-421, on its list of cases to be considered at the December 13 conference. This is the case on whether Michigan’s Secretary of State should have kept Gary Johnson off the November 2012 ballot. Johnson appeared on the ballot in all states plus D.C. and Guam, except that he didn’t appear in Oklahoma because too many signatures were required, and he didn’t appear in Michigan because his name had been entered on the February 2012 Republican presidential primary.
On December 2, the U.S. Supreme Court revealed that it will not hear Virginia’s appeal in Judd v Libertarian Party of Virginia, 13-231. This is the case on the constitutionality of Virginia’s ban on out-of-state circulators.
Because the Libertarian Party has now definitely won this case, it is likely that a bill will be introduced in the 2014 Virginia legislature to repeal the ban. It is hoped that the Libertarian Party will be able to persuade the legislature to make other ballot access improvements in the same bill. The obvious flaw with Virginia’s ballot access laws is that the vote test for party status is excessive. The median vote test of the 50 states is 2%, but Virginia’s is 10%.
