The other SCOTUS ruling: yeah, Citizens United can fuck states' rights, too

[CountDeMoney]

Supreme Court strikes down Montana's campaign finance law

WASHINGTON — In a closely watched case, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday threw out a 100-year-old Montana law barring corporations from spending money on political campaigns.

The decision reaffirms and expands to Montana the Supreme Court's position in the Citizens United case that it's constitutional for companies and unions to spend unlimited amounts of money to advocate for candidates and issues.

Many Democrats in Montana decried the decision as political.

"It is a sad day for our democracy and for those of us who still want to believe that the United States Supreme Court is anything more than another political body," Montana Attorney General Steve Bullock said.

Gov. Brian Schweitzer, a Democrat, said this ruling ends a century of clean elections in Montana.

"We've got a Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., who says they know better and they now say it's OK to have dirty, secret, corporate, foreign money buying elections from the White House to the court house," he said.

Montana had refused to adhere to the 2010 Citizens United ruling, citing the state's 1912 law that banned corporate political spending. The case, American Tradition Partnership v. Bullock, challenged that position and the state Supreme Court sided with Montana. Monday's decision, made without oral arguments, summarily reverses that ruling, thereby nullifying the century-old Montana law.

It also upends the landscape in one of the most contested U.S. Senate races in the country: Sen. Jon Tester vs. Rep. Denny Rehberg.

Tester, a Democrat, said the ruling doesn't guarantee free speech — it guarantees corruption.

"Today's ruling is an endorsement of secret spending and the backwards notion that corporations somehow have the same constitutional rights as American citizens," he said, adding that the ruling will "open the gates to even more out-of-state money from secretive special interests."

Fellow Montana Democrat, Sen. Max Baucus, also denounced the decision, calling it a "dangerous blow to democracy." Baucus has proposed a constitutional amendment that would give Congress the authority to set campaign finance laws.

"My constitutional amendment would right this wrong once and for all, and today's announcement makes me more determined than ever to get it done," he said.

Meanwhile, Rehberg, a Republican, praised the decision, saying that free speech is guaranteed by the Constitution no matter if you are a member of a labor union, private business or political party.

"Instead of trying to silence political dissent, let's focus on improving transparency and creating stricter reporting requirements," he said. "There's no excuse for letting powerful special interest groups exert influence on our elections from behind a veil of secrecy and anonymity."

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., also hailed the ruling, calling it "an important victory for free speech."

The Citizens United decision opened the door to unlimited spending by organizations and wealthy donors via shadowy groups called "super PACs," which can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money as long as they do not coordinate their message with the candidates they support.

Campaign finance reform advocates had flocked to the Montana case, hoping for an opportunity to revisit the Citizens United case.

"It's devastating because this was one of our main strategies for dealing with Citizens United," said Rob Hager, an attorney for Essential Information, a nonprofit citizen action group founded by Ralph Nader.

He and others had urged Montana to argue that the Supreme Court lacked jurisdiction, based on the 11th Amendment, which bars federal courts from hearing lawsuits brought by private parties against states.

"The state should have raised the jurisdiction argument right away," said Carl Mayer, who filed a brief in support of Montana on behalf of the Eleventh Amendment Movement (TEAM) group. "We predicted this outcome. Everyone knows that the majority wasn't going to be persuaded to reconsider Citizens United on its merits."

The court's 5-4 vote fell largely along political lines, with the court's majority ignoring pleas from the court's more liberal justices to give a full hearing to the case because the massive campaign spending since the 2010 ruling has called into question some of its underpinnings.

Twenty-two states and the U.S. capital area, as well as Sen. John McCain, the former Republican presidential candidate, and other congressional champions of stricter regulations on campaign money, joined with Montana.

In an unsigned one-page opinion, the court's majority wrote that on the question of whether the Citizens United ruling applies to Montana law: "There can be no serious doubt that it does."

"Montana's arguments in support of the judgment below either were already rejected in Citizens United, or fail to meaningfully distinguish that case," the majority wrote.

Justice Stephen Breyer, joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, wrote the dissent.

"Montana's experience, like considerable experience elsewhere since the Court's decision in Citizens United, casts grave doubt on the Court's supposition that independent expenditures do not corrupt or appear to do so," Breyer wrote. "Were the matter up to me, I would vote to grant the petition for certiorari in order to reconsider Citizens United or, at least, its application in this case."

[Josephus]

Oh, Amerika!

[garbon]

Don't really see the cause for concern here...other than Montana wasting the money of the few taxpayer's that it has.

[DGuller]

My guess is that far into the future, the Roberts Court will be viewed about the same as the Taney Court.  Of course, I'm being optimistic, because that assumes that the present state of things is a sociopathic aberration that would be denounced by the generations that follow, and is not a permanent step away from civilization.

[Eddie Teach]

Don't really see the cause for concern here...other than Montana wasting the money of the few taxpayer's that it has.

ZOMG the evol corporations are buying elections!!!111

[jimmy olsen]

My guess is that far into the future, the Roberts Court will be viewed about the same as the Taney Court.  Of course, I'm being optimistic, because that assumes that the present state of things is a sociopathic aberration that would be denounced by the generations that follow, and is not a permanent step away from civilization.

While the Taney Court is of course denounced for the Dred Scott decision, with that exception isn't the Taney Court well viewed by historians?

I don't think that's what you're hoping for with the Roberts court.

[CountDeMoney]

Don't really see the cause for concern here...

Of course you don't.

[Neil]

Meh.  It's not like your system can be fixed anyways.  Born in treason and too different from Westminster to prosper, you guys might as well pack it in.

[derspiess]

Meh.  It's not like your system can be fixed anyways.  Born in treason and too different from Westminster to prosper, you guys might as well pack it in.

Then where you gonna get your football?

[garbon]

Don't really see the cause for concern here...

Of course you don't.

Taking issue with the Citizen's United decision sure - but getting concerned that states are being told they can't refuse to comply? Seems like a logical next step...

[Scipio]

States are sovereigns.  Sovereigns don't have rights, they have powers.

[Neil]

Meh.  It's not like your system can be fixed anyways.  Born in treason and too different from Westminster to prosper, you guys might as well pack it in.

Then where you gonna get your football?

Hey now.  Your political system might be trash, but the NFL is the best sport in the world.  You can fix one without ruining the other.

[grumbler]

While the Taney Court is of course denounced for the Dred Scott decision, with that exception isn't the Taney Court well viewed by historians?

Not really.  The Taney Court took many stances that seemed contrary to any reasonable interpretation of actual law, for instance.

Taney's court ruled, for instance, that the US Congress could not restrict the spread of slavery, and that all of the compromises designed to do so were unconstitutional.  This was pulling-law-out-the-ass on a scale exceeding that of decision based on Dred Scott's actual status.  Taney's  repeated reference to "states' rights" and "community rights" despite the fact that those rights existed nowhere under the US system of government now seem vaguely activist, despite Taney's sincere belief that he was merely following precident that was obvious to him, if nowhere articulated.

The Court was not criticized for all of its decisions, of course.  The decision on the non-justiciable nature of political disputes like those in Rhode Island is, I believe, still the precedent for the court.  Its work on the distinction between Federal and state responsibilities in interstate commerce still stands.

Taney as a man has remained a fairly admirable figure in historians' eyes, for some reason.  He suffered from the inherent contradictions between what he thought as a white man's white man, and what he thought as a human being.  He freed his own slaves, but never thought that blacks were really people.  He ruled in favor of the supremacy of the Supreme Court over state courts, but against the equivalent supremacy of Congress.  Me, I think he was a dick, and I am glad he lived long enough to see everything he worked for in the area of "states' rights" and white supremacy destroyed.

[grumbler]

States are sovereigns.  Sovereigns don't have rights, they have powers.

I've never understood why so many people don't get that distinction.

[Scipio]

States are sovereigns.  Sovereigns don't have rights, they have powers.

I've never understood why so many people don't get that distinction.

It's very convenient to be ignorant of that fact.  Southerners get to elide racism out of the civil war, and progressives get to elide humanity out of the state.  Everyone gets what they want, and they get to use the same bad terminology to advance their agendas.