SEATTLE — The Grocery Manufacturers Association must pay $18 million in civil fines for concealing the true source of contributions it received and spent to oppose a 2013 food labeling initiative, a Washington state judge ruled Wednesday.
Judge Anne Hirsch found that the D.C.-based food industry group intentionally violated state campaign finance disclosure laws in its efforts to defeat Initiative 522.
The Grocery Manufacturers Association, which collected money from the nation’s top food companies, and five corporations raised $22 million to defeat the measure, which would have required labeling of genetically modified foods in the state. Voters narrowly rejected the proposal in one of the state’s costliest initiative fights.
Because the judge found that group intentionally violated the law, her civil penalty of $6 million will be tripled to $18 million.
Both the Attorney General’s Office and the trade association did not immediately provide comments when contacted Wednesday evening.
Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson sued the trade association in 2013, saying it collected money from member companies and concealed the source of $11 million in campaign contributions. State lawyers also argued that the group violated state campaign disclosure laws by failing to register as a political committee.
The association has said it believed it complied with the law. It also has said that if it had unintentionally violated the law, it was an inadvertent mistake that should warrant only a modest penalty.
In March, Hirsch ruled that the group violated state campaign finance disclosure laws. Her ruling Wednesday followed a four-day penalty phase trial in August to determine what fine the group would pay.
State attorneys had argued that the trade group set up a separate account, collected more than $14 million from companies and used most of that money to oppose Initiative 522 without disclosing the true source of the contributions to the state.
Nestle SA, PepsiCo Inc. and Coca-Cola Co. were among those that contributed to the account. About $11 million was spent from that account to defeat the ballot measure.
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