‘Citizens United’ Backlash’
Posted By admin On January 5, 2012 @ 8:59 pm In National & World News,Political & Politicians | Comments Disabled
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Montana Supreme Court Upholds State’s Corporate Campaign Spending Ban [2]
By Mike Sacks
WASHINGTON — The Montana Supreme Court has put itself on a collision course with the U.S. Supreme Court by upholding a century-old state law [3] that bans corporate spending in state and local political campaigns.
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The law, which was passed by Montana voters in 1912 to combat Gilded Age corporate control over much of Montana’s government, states that a “corporation may not make … an expenditure in connection with a candidate or a political party that supports or opposes a candidate or a political party.” In 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court, in its landmark Citizens United v. Federal Election Commissiondecision [4], struck down a similar federal statute, holding that independent electoral spending by corporations “do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption” that such laws were enacted to combat.
That reasoning — described by the Citizens United dissenters as a “crabbed view of corruption [5]” — compelled 23 of the 24 states with independent spending bans to stop enforcing their restrictions, according to Edwin Bender, executive director of the Helena, Mont.-based National Institute on Money in State Politics [6]. Montana, however, stood by its 1912 law, … Read More [2]
Article printed from Recorder Online: http://www.berthoudrecorder.com
URL to article: http://www.berthoudrecorder.com/2012/01/05/citizens-united-backlash/
URLs in this post:
[1] Image: http://www.berthoudrecorder.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Huff_Post_politics.jpg
[2] Montana Supreme Court Upholds State’s Corporate Campaign Spending Ban: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/04/citizens-united-montana-supreme-court-corporate-spending_n_1182168.html?ref=supreme-court
[3] upholding a century-old state law: http://applicationengine.mt.gov/getContent?vsId={1C0B7886-01C0-49E3-A71A-C06CA7E71040}&impersonate=true&objectStoreName=PROD%20OBJECT%20STORE&objectType=document
[4] Citizens United v. Federal Election Commissiondecision: http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/08-205.ZS.html
[5] crabbed view of corruption: http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/08-205.ZX.html
[6] National Institute on Money in State Politics: http://www.followthemoney.org/
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