In a 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court last week struck down the matching public funds provision of the Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Act, calling the provision unconstitutional.
In the opinion he authored for the court, Chief Justice John Roberts said, “We hold that Arizona’s matching funds scheme substantially burdens protected political speech without serving a compelling state interest, and therefore violates the First Amendment.”
The Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Act, passed by initiative in 1998, created a voluntary public financing system to fund the primary and general election campaigns of candidates for state office.
Candidates who opt to participate, and who accept certain campaign restrictions and obligations, are granted an initial outlay of public funds to conduct their campaign. They are also granted additional matching funds if a privately financed candidate’s expenditures, combined with the expenditures of independent groups made in support of the privately funded or against the publicly funded candidate, exceed the publicly financed candidate’s initial state allotment.
Essentially, once the spending cap triggers the matching funds, publicly funded candidates would receive a nearly dollar-for-dollar match of donations from the state. For instance, if a privately funded candidate held a fundraiser that generated $1,000 in contributions, each of his publicly funded opponents would receive $940. If an independent expenditure group spent $1,000 on a brochure expressing its support for a privately funded candidate or opposition to publicly financed candidates, the publicly funded candidates would receive $940 each.
In its opinion, the court said no matter how much effort a privately funded candidate or his supporters put into raising money for their campaign, the publicly funded candidate is automatically granted nearly the same amount of money. Roberts wrote, “The privately financed candidate must shoulder a special and potentially significant burden when choosing to exercise his First Amendment right to spend funds on his own candidacy.”
The court disagreed with Arizona’s assertion that the public matching funds program creates more speech during a campaign, saying that only the speech of publicly financed candidates is increased by the state law.
“Burdening the speech of some to increase the speech of others is a concept wholly foreign to the First Amendment,” said Roberts.
Roberts said the case made that the matching funds provision helps avoid corruption in the election process wasn’t strong enough.
“Given Arizona’s contribution limits, some of the most austere in the nation, its strict disclosure requirements, and the general availability of public funding, it is hard to imagine what marginal corruption deterrence could be generated by the matching funds provision,” he said.
The Supreme Court’s decision blocked the ruling of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which previously upheld Arizona’s matching funds provision. It upheld the rulings from U.S. District Court Judge Roslyn O. Silver, who declared the provision unconstitutional. Members of the Citizens Clean Elections Commission said they were disappointed with the Supreme Court ruling, but pointed out it affects only the matching funds portion of the law, and the rest of the Clean Elections law still stands.
Goldwater Institute officials, who issued an emergency request to the Supreme Court to block the 9th Circuit ruling, are pleased with the outcome, and pointed out the ruling affects similar matching funds provisions in Florida, Maine, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Rhode Island and Wisconsin. In a statement they noted, “The court’s decision puts an end to these unconstitutional experiments.”
