Litigation

Appeals Court Hears Debate over AZ Public-Finance Law

By Peter Hardin

A federal appeals court panel heard arguments this week over the constitutionality of a portion of Arizona?s public financing system for statewide and legislative offices, in a legal dispute that could go all the way to the Supreme Court.

An attorney for the Citizens Clean Elections Commission defended the law before a panel of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. Lawyer Brad Phillips said, according to an East Valley Tribune article, that public financing of candidates is constitutional when it advances a “compelling” purpose of government, and preventing corruption is included.

Phillips asserted that the absence of criminal charges lodged against lawmakers since an Arizona scandal in the early 1990s shows the public funding system both works well and is legal.

Lawyer Nicholas Dranias of the Goldwater Institute challenged the constitutionality of the provision at issue. It provides additional taxpayer dollars to publicly-funded candidates if their privately-funded opponent exceeds a spending limit set by the state.

Dranias  contended these matching funds for publicly-funded candidates amount to a penalty on their privately-funded opponents.

In January,  U.S. District Judge Roslyn Silver ruled the provision unconstitutional (see Gavel Grab). Judge  Silver said the  matching-funds provision violates the First Amendment because it causes candidates without public funding  to limit their own campaigning, fundraising and  spending of their own money.

An appeals court decision is likely to be appealed to the Supreme Court, the Arizona Republic reported.

West Virginia recently became the fourth state  to adopt public financing for state judicial elections. You can read about its law, and about debates over legality of public financing plans for judicial elections, in Gavel Grab.

Full post as published by The Gavel on April 13, 2010 (boomark / email).