This past weekend marked the two-year anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United.  Protesters, dubbed Occupy the Courts, gathered at the Court to voice their disapproval of the decision:

As Institute for Justice campaign finance expert Paul Sherman explains in the video above:

The irony of those protests is that you had groups of people getting together to speak out against a Supreme Court decision that protected the right of people to get together and speak out.

Indeed, people should not lose their right to free speech simply by exercising their right to freely associate.   And when people group together—be it on the steps of a courthouse, in the form of a trade union or as a corporation—they don’t lose their freedom to speak out.

Occupy the Courts protesters also mistakenly believed that the Citizens United ruling held that “money is speech.”  In fact, the Court never said that.  Rather, it ruled correctly that money facilitates speech.  And if the government has the power to control how much money you can spend speaking, then it effectively can control your speech.

Importantly, the law in question in the Citizens United case empowered the government to fine and even imprison ordinary people for engaging in certain types of speech.   The government argued in court that it had the power to ban videos and books.  I don’t believe that many Americans, including the Occupy the Courts protesters, think the government should be in the business of banning books.

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Karen Sampson and her Colorado neighbors just won a serious victory for liberty.

In a unanimous decision on Tuesday, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down Colorado’s disclosure laws for grassroots political groups.  This is a big deal.  As the Associated Press put it, “The issue is ripe for an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.”

The federal appellate court held that Karen and her neighbors in the tiny subdivision of Parker North, Colo., should not have been forced to register with the government and comply with burdensome campaign finance laws simply for opposing a ballot issue involving the annexation of their neighborhood.

I wrote previously at Big Government that Karen and her neighbors opposed an effort to annex their town into a neighboring city because it would raise their taxes without providing them benefits.  So they printed up fliers and yard signs.  And then they got sued.

Under what basis?  Colorado’s campaign finance laws, which state that any group of individuals that spends over $200 magically becomes an “issue committee” that is forced to register with the state.  Further, they had to track and report all their “contributions” and “expenditures” and disclose the identities of anyone who gave them money.

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**Link Fixed**

Today the United States Supreme Court released its decision in the case of Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission.  This long overdue decision is a victory not only for Citizens United but also for the First Amendment.  The majority opinion clearly and decisively explained that “[n]o sufficient governmental interest justifies limits on the political speech of nonprofit or for-profit corporations.”

The case decided this morning revolves around the 2007 film Hillary the Movie.  The film, which took an in-depth and critical look at the career of Hillary Clinton, was set to appear on cable television via video on demand during the Democratic presidential primary season in 2008.  The broadcast was prohibited by the so-called Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, because Citizens United was organized as a corporation and had accepted a small amount of contributions from corporations to finance the film.

The government walks down a very treacherous path when it attempts to regulate speech, whether on film, print, or television.  Previous case law including Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce and McConnell vs. FEC had created a regulatory scheme so complex one dare not speak without consulting a lawyer.  Even then, one should only consult an election lawyer with years of experience because the rules are so complex and precise.  As a lawyer you’d think I’d welcome the business, but not at the expense of the First Amendment. (more…)