The Washington Post reports today that Justice Alito gave a speech warning about the threats to free speech to the National Italian American Foundation.
That sound you hear is the speculation machine in DC going to 11.
If Justice Alito sides with WRTL on the free speech side (as opposed to the campaign finance reform side of the FEC), that would most likely represent the reversing vote for the provision of McCain-Feingold that stops nonprofits from engaging in certain types of grassroots lobbying communications near elections. Remember Alito replaced O'Connor and she voted to support the general principle (for lack of a better term) of this portion McCain-Feingold a few years back.
I've long felt that this part of the law (the "electioneering communications" provision) was created with the best of intentions, but simply carved out more legitimate nonpartisan, nonpolitical speech than the Constitution allows. Unlike many of the people that I agree with on this issue, I am definitely not a supporter of election deregulation. Should the Court toss this out to the recycling bin, I hope there's a middle path to ensure election advertisements can be properly regulated while protecting the lobbying voices of nonprofit groups.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment