Tuesday, June 27, 2017
Notes on meeting
with Lesley Crane, lawyer for speaker of the house/GOP caucus, and
Jill, staff counsel for the house of rep, or whatever her title is.
Confirming our
conversation, we met today and discussed both IC 3-9-3-2.5 and IC
3-5-3-2-6, if that’s the right cite, disclaimers and the $100
threshold for fines under the Indiana Campaign Finance Act.
I enjoyed speaking
with you both and think we had a productive meeting. I am following
up with a few of the case sites we discussed. The briefing in Majors
has a more comprehensive list of the relevant case law, but these are
the highlights.
The landmark case
establishing that disclaimer requirements are unconstitutional was
Taley v California (1960). The better known case is McIntyre v Ohio
Elections Commission (1995).
The case which
applied McIntyre to Indiana’s former IC 3-9-3-2 was Stewart v
Taylor (S D Ind. 1997).
I received a
settlement of $7,000 in that case. I had put up a sign that said
“Robbin Stewart for Township Board Vote Tuesday”.
When the legislature
passed 3-9-3-2.5, re-instating the provisions that they had just been
told were unconstitutional, I brought Majors v Abell. Cite. I
eventually lost that case 2-1 at the 7th circuit.
I am ready to begin
future rounds of litigation – I need the money – but I have no
objection to a legislative solution, repealing IC 3-9-3-2.5.
Recent controlling
cases include Reed Town of Gilbert and AID v Open Society, which said
it is a basic principle of First Amendment law that the government
cannot tell people what they must say.
This references a
long line of compelled speech cases including Barnette v W Virginia
Board of Education, Wooley v Maynard, Riley v Foundation for the
Blind, and Tornillo v Miami Herald, among others.
There have been at
least two other cases which applied McIntyre to Indiana statutes,
Ogden v Marendt and Mulholland v Marion County Election Board, which
I mentioned settled for $80,000, after the Board spent 150,000
retaining private counsel to handle the case.
We can avoid that
sort of thing by repealing the statute. Alternatively, what both
caucuses might prefer is to redraft the statute to have it apply only
to corporate speech. I think such a statute would pass muster under
the First Amendment in light of Citizens United, although it might
have problems under Article I section 9 of the Indiana Constitution.
Thanks again for
today’s meeting.
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I wrote this while my internet was briefly down, so I need to add in some cites before sending.
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I wrote this while my internet was briefly down, so I need to add in some cites before sending.
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