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Supreme Court rules in Wisconsin Rt to Life
Here's the ruling. On a quick read of the syllabus:
Core issue: McCain-Feingold forbid a corporation to spend money for airtime ads that mention a candidate's (literally, make any mention of it) within certain time periods before elections. The Court earlier upheld these limits, as a generality, in the McConnell decision (a 5-4).
Here a nonprofit advocacy group desire to buy airtime, and mention candidates who happened to be incumbents, urging people to call them and ask them to vote to confirm certain judges. The ads had no "express advocacy" of an election type, never said vote for or against the legislator or anything close.
The Court rules that forbidding this is a first amendment violation, but splits pretty widely:
Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito don't see a need to question McConnell just now, but do see that the law as applied here is unconstitutional. It burdens political speech, is subject to strict scrutiny. Ads may be reasonably interpreted as something other than election advocacy (note that narrows such advocacy to situations where there seems no other explanation). Statute in this context fails strict scrutiny. Alito's concurrence adds that if it is later shown that the statute chills political speech despite this interpretation, it may be necessary to revisit McConnell and decide whether the statute is unconstitutional on its face.
Justices Scalia, Kennedy, and Thomas, concur on a broader basis: they'd overrule McConnell.
Justices Souter, Ginsburg, Stevens, and Breyer dissent, and would uphold the ban as applied to this ad. They argue that the ads here are indistinguishable from at least one ad involved in McConnell, and say the lead opinion (Roberts + Alito) really does overrule that cast.
Comments
The McConnell decision should be overruled. McCain-Feingold is an abomination - a law supposedly to uphold the First Amendment by restricting political speech!
Posted by: Bill at June 25, 2007 12:05 PM
Bravo.
Posted by: Jim W at June 25, 2007 12:11 PM
A win for free speech! Sadly, we also had a lose for free speech today, as well.
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=070625171239.87j0a1gu&show_article=1
Posted by: Jonas Salk at June 25, 2007 12:59 PM