WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court issued a unanimous opinion Monday that suggests some political advertisers may eventually be entitled to an exemption from regulations imposed by the 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act.
In an unsigned opinion issued six days after the justices heard oral arguments in the case, brought by an anti-abortion group, the court threw out a 2004 federal court ruling that had barred all challenges to a key provision of the law by corporate or union advertisers.
Wisconsin Right to Life had challenged the part of the 2002 campaign finance law that bans the use of corporate or union money for ads that identify federal candidates two months before a general election. Ads the group wanted to broadcast in the state during the 2004 election would have urged people to tell Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., who was up for re-election, and the state’s other senator to oppose a filibuster of President Bush’s judicial nominees.
The group contends the law violates its First Amendment right to broadcast non-election-related grass-roots lobbying ads and that the content of political ads must be considered case by case.
The justices said the decision by a three-judge panel of the U.S. District Court in Washington was a misinterpretation of the Supreme Court’s 2003 decision upholding the law, which is also known as the McCain-Feingold law, named after its two Senate sponsors, John McCain, R-Ariz., and Feingold.
The court ordered the three-judge panel to redo the case and say specifically which kinds of corporate-paid ads may qualify for an exemption.
Monday’s ruling leaves the law unchanged through the 2006 election cycle. But it creates the real possibility that the courts could later devise a loophole for many corporate or union advertisements. The challengers get a second try in the courts now; if that produces a broad definition of exempt advertising, then the McCain-Feingold provision could be significantly undercut, election law analysts said.
The decision also avoided a potentially sticky situation in which the court, without the departing Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, would have tied 4 to 4 on the merits of the case.
Separately Monday, the court steered clear of another dispute over campaign finance rules for state judicial elections. The justices declined to hear an appeal by the chairperson of the Minnesota Board on Judicial Standards, who was asking them to uphold ethics rules banning personal fund-raising or partisan activity by judicial candidates. Instead, the justices let stand a federal appeals court ruling that struck down the rules as a violation of free speech.
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