NYT: (Supreme) Court Opens (McCain-Feingold) Campaign Law to Challenges

[DeepModem Mom]

Court Opens Campaign Law to Challenges
By LINDA GREENHOUSE
Published: January 24, 2006


WASHINGTON, Jan. 23 - The Supreme Court, ruling on Monday in an important campaign finance case, opened the door to a new round of legal challenges to the limits Congress placed four years ago on election advertisements paid for by corporations and broadcast during the weeks before federal elections.

The court's opinion was surprising, coming only six days after the argument. It was unsigned, barely two pages long and unanimous.

It may, however, have considerable impact, given that two years ago the court itself appeared to foreclose further challenges to the "electioneering communications" part of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002. The court upheld the law, usually called McCain-Feingold after its Senate sponsors, in a 5-to-4 decision that considered multiple free-speech challenges to the statute "on its face" rather than in particular applications.

The court ruled on Monday that both the government and a special three-judge Federal District Court here had misinterpreted its earlier decision as foreclosing future challenges to the advertising restrictions as they applied to particular advertisements or corporate sponsors.

The justices vacated the lower court's opinion and ordered it to consider the merits of an anti-abortion group's argument that the statute, if applied to an advertisement the group sought to broadcast on Wisconsin television stations beginning in the summer of 2004, would violate the First Amendment rights to free speech and to petition the government....


http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/24/politics/politicsspecial1/24donate.html?_r=1

[mom cat]

1. Keep fighting Alito. We do not want it to get worse than it already is.