New Filings Tag

A Democratic congressman, saying that a Supreme Court ruling on a new campaign finance case would not be likely before the November elections, urged the Court on Tuesday not to rush the schedule for considering the case.   Rep. Christopher Van Hollen, Jr., of Maryland, a defender of limits on campaign finance, filed a response to the motion to expedite in the case of Republican National Committee, et al., v. Federal Election Commission, et al. (091287).  Van Hollen is a party in the case.

A long-running dispute over the denial of voting rights to those convicted of serious crimes -- a dispute that some civil liberties advocates say is the next major battleground over voters' rights -- has so far not gained review in the Supreme Court.  It may elude review again, as a conflict that had developed among lower courts has now been put in doubt.  The Justices considered, at their private Conference today, a new case on the issue from Massachusetts; they did so after lawyers for that state had notified the Court of the possible end of the lower courts' disagreement.

In a legal move that very likely is a prelude to a Supreme Court appeal, an Algerian who has been imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay for more than eight years has begun a new challenge to a major ruling against detainees' rights by the D.C. Circuit Court -- a ruling that was left intact by the Supreme Court last month.  That decision brought a sweeping rejection of federal judges' power to review government decisions on the fate of Guantanamo detainees. The Algerian, Ahmed Belbacha, has pursued a variety of legal efforts to avoid being returned to his homeland, where he says he fears persecution not only by the government, but also death threats by a terrorist organization operating there.  On Tuesday night, his lawyers made their new move, asking the full, en banc D.C. Circuit Court to reopen the case of Kiyemba v. Obama (informally known as "Kiyemba II") on the premise that he is directly affected by that ruling and that the decision sharply deviates from the Supreme Court's 2008 decision adding to the legal rights of those held at Guantanamo Bay. The fact that the Supreme Court refused to hear the Kiyemba case, turning it aside on March 22, does not mean that the decision in that case could not be tested anew.

The Federal Election Commission, suggesting that the Supreme Court may well want to take on a new campaign finance case, has asked the D.C. Circuit Court not to rush into effect its March ruling in that case (SpeechNow.org, et al., v. FEC, Circuit docket 08-5223).  The Commission asked that the government be allowed several more weeks to make up its mind what to do next.  The oppposition to immediate release of the mandate in the SpeechNow case is here. In its unanimous, en banc SpeechNow decision, the Circuit Court ruled that the conservative advocacy organization had a right to raise unlimited amounts of money to spend directly on opposing or supporting candidates in elections to Congress -- presumably, including this year's election.  The decision has not yet been put into effect, and presently is not scheduled to be until May 17.  But the organization's leaders want the case to be implemented immediately, to increase their chances of actually taking part in this year's campaign.  (The plea was discussed in this post earlier this month.)  That is the plea the FEC resisted in its filing on Friday.

The Republican National Committee on Friday urged the Supreme Court to speed up its schedule for acting on the new GOP appeal challenging federal campaign finance law, but the timing it suggested would reduce significantly the chances for a ruling before the Court recesses for the summer.  (The appeal itself, filed Friday, is discussed in the post below.)  The motion to expedite, asking the Court at least to take its first look at the case before the recess, is here.

Leaders of the Republican Party, claiming that parties are put at a "profound disadvantage" by current limits on money in politics, on Friday afternoon asked the Supreme Court to free party organizations at national and state levels from curbs on so-called "soft money."  The jurisdictional statement in Republican National Committee, et al., v. Federal Election Commission, et al. (docket 09-1287) is here.  Under federal campaign finance law, the Court is supposed to give such cases faster-than-normal review.  Whether a ruling could come in time to have an effect on this year's congressional elections is unclear.  (UPDATE: A motion to expedite has now been filed; review before summer is doubtful. See post above.) The new appeal, in a legal form that the Court has little choice but to decide it, is an attempt to expand the impact of the Justices' ruling in January, in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, applying First Amendment free speech rights more broadly to campaign finance activity. The GOP appeal also argued that the Citizens United ruling undercut the basis of a seven-year-old decision by the Court upholding restrictions on political parties' ability to raise and spend so-called "soft money" -- that is, money that will not be spent to support a candidate, but to support state candidates and to pay for voter registration drives and get-out-the-vote efforts.  Parties cannot raise any more of this money than the funds they can gather to support a specific candidate for Congress or the Presidency, which are subject to specific ceilings.

A group of conservative political activists, putting new pressure on the Obama Administration to make up its mind on taking a new campaign finance case to the Supreme Court, on Friday asked the D.C. Circuit Court to put into effect immediately its ruling in that case -- SpeechNow.org, et al., v. Federal Election Commission (Circuit docket 08-5223).  The motion to issue the mandate swiftly can be found here. If the Circuit Court agrees to issue the mandate immediately, the case will return to U.S. District Court, likely leading to new court orders freeing the SpeechNow organization and its leaders to start raising money in unlimited amounts to support or oppose candidates in the coming congressional election primaries and the general election Nov. 2.  In addition, the FEC itself would begin crafting new rules, presumably to accommodate that fund-raising.  Those developments, however, would be delayed, or at least altered, if the Solicitor General pursues an appeal in the Supreme Court.

Picking up where the Supreme Court left off last June, and beginning an effort that could end up again before the Court, a group of voters and political activists in a small North Carolina town on Wednesday opened a new constitutional challenge to Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act -- one of history's most significant civil rights laws.  In a complaint filed in U.S. District Court, the Carolinians argued that Section 5 discriminates on the basis of race.  The challengers also sought to have the case -- LaRoque, et al., v. Holder (District Court docket 10-561) -- decided by a three-judge Court.  A news release describing the lawsuit is here.  The motion for a hree-judge Court is here. Section 5 narrowly escaped a constitutional ruling in the Supreme Court at the end of last Term, when the Court, by an 8-1 vote, sharply re-cast its interpretation of the scope of Section 5 to avoid confronting what it called "serious" constitutional questions.   The Court ruled that any local political unit had to have the option of "bailing out" from Section 5's coverage, if that unit did not have a history of discriminating in voting on the basis of race.  (The Justices ruled in Northwest Austin Municipal Utilty District v. Holder.)  The very issue the Court avoided is the only one raised in the LaRoque lawsuit filed Wednesday.

Seeking to turn a Supreme Court ruling into a real-world result, lawyers for five detainees at Guantanamo Bay on Monday urged the D.C. Circuit Court to reject a move by the Justice Department to put back into effect a lower court decision that, the lawyers said, has left federal courts "impotent to exercise judicial power' over the prisoners' fate.  The lower court decision at issue was set aside March 1 by the Supreme Court (Kiyemba v. Obama, or "Kiyemba I", 08-1234), after the Justices earlier had agreed to rule on it.  However, government lawyers then moved on March 22 to get the Circuit Court to reinstate the decision just as it was.  The government plea was discussed in this post.   The new detainees' brief filed Monday and opposing that request is here. The new developments represent the continuing dispute over the meaning, and impact, of the Supreme Court's 2008 ruling in Boumediene v. Bush.  The Justices in that ruling provided little specific guidance on what lower court judges should do with the newly-declared right of Guantanamo prisoners to challenge their continued detention.  In filling in some of the gaps, the D.C. Circuit Court has significantly narrowed the scope of judicial review of detainee cases.  Congress, too, has weighed in on the fate of the detainees, leading lawyers in the new brief Monday to complain of "political hysteria" on Capitol Hill over the prisoners' future.