Supreme Court Case: Randall v. Sorrell

Amicus Briefs in Support of Respondents: Brief Summary Excerpts

Following are excerpts, intended to capture the essence of the argument presented in these briefs. Click here to access the full text of the briefs.

Campaign Finance Reform Advocates: TheRestofUs.org, U.S. PIRG, Common Cause, the League of Women Voters, AARP, Public Campaign, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, and the Union for Reform Judaism

• Under the Constitution's Guarantee Clause, states are obligated to maintain a republican form of government - a government of the people. . . .
• In enacting expenditure limits, Vermont understood the importance of deliberation and public participation in preserving a republican form of government. . . . Act 64's expenditure limits promote deliberation and public participation by preventing corruption and its appearance; increasing the competitiveness of elections and the number of candidates who can run for elected office; creating more time for deliberation among elected officials; and fostering contact between voters and candidates.

The Center for Democracy and Election Management at American University

• Evidence from America's democratic colleagues suggests that common assumptions undergirding the case against limiting campaign expenditure in the United States are questionable, if not wrong: (1) Spending limits certainly do not impair, and may even enhance democracy, electoral competition, and free speech and association, while clearly reducing the influence of money in politics; (2) A majority of the freest, most democratic, and economically advanced countries in the world regulate campaign expenditures and contributions; (3) in comparison, low-income and new democracies are less likely to do so.

U.S. Senators John F. Reed, Thomas R. Carper, Mark Dayton, Richard J. Durbin, Dianne Feinstein, Tom Harkin, Edward M. Kennedy, Carl Levin and U.S. Representatives Charles F. Bass, Michael N. Castle, James A. Leach, Tom Osborne, and Todd Russell

• [N]othing in three decades of experience since Buckley calls into question the Court's decision to uphold the legislative judgment that campaign contribution limits are essential to preserving the public's faith in the electoral process and our representative institutions. Rather, the accumulated experience of members of Congress, reinforced by empirical evidence, is that the dominance of money in politics continues to threaten the public's faith in the legitimacy of government and in the elections that choose whom shall govern - notwithstanding the existence of contribution limits of the kind upheld in Buckley. . . . [We] believe Buckley can and should be read to provide government with the leeway to impose expenditure limitations if supported by a record of compelling state interests sufficient to support the limitations. As the Second Circuit recognized, there is no rule of per se First Amendment invalidity. [We] believe Buckley's approach to expenditure limitations is ripe for re-examination in light of the three decades of experience under the regime of campaign finance regulation that Buckley dictated.

Former U.S. Senators Bill Bradley and Alan Simpson

• Without expenditure limits, campaign costs have escalated and fundraising has become an inordinately time-consuming job for candidates and office holders. Due to the excessive demands of fundraising, it is difficult for elected officials to fulfill their duties. As a result, the quality of representation has declined, and the integrity of elected office has been undermined. Thus, protecting the time of elected officials from the burdens of constant fundraising presents a compelling government interest....

Thirteen Current and Former State Court Justices and Judges

• It is neither necessary nor appropriate . . . to read Buckley as an absolute ban on all mandatory limits on campaign spending. It is a mistake to read the language of any opinion . . . as a theoretical pronouncement divorced from the fact pattern and statutory scheme that was actually before the Court. . . . Buckley did not present the issue whether expenditure caps applicable to judicial candidates might be justified by interests unique to the judiciary. This Court thus should not read Buckley to foreclose generous spending limits in campaigns for the bench. . . . If this Court concludes that Buckley categorically precludes all spending limits, then Buckley should be revisited.

Attorneys General of the States of Connecticut, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Mexico, New York, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Wisconsin, and Wyoming

• Although the States have tried myriad reforms, they have not, to date, succeeded in controlling effectively the rampant corruption, extraordinary fundraising pressure, or loss of equal opportunity for political participation caused by limitless campaign spending. Expenditure limits, however, hold particular promise as a means of addressing these concerns. While each State must assess for itself whether expenditure limits will serve its unique needs, it is essential that the States have the choice. Numerous States are actively pursuing reforms that include such limits and public support for such measures is extraordinarily high. Given the urgent need to restore public confidence in the integrity of our democratic process, [we] urge this Court to affirm the judgment of the Second Circuit upholding the constitutionality of expenditure limits and permit States nationwide to experiment with these critically needed reforms.

Secretaries of State of New Hampshire, New Mexico, Oregon and Wisconsin

• [We] submit that affirmance of the Second Circuit's decision upholding Vermont's law is essential if state and local governments are to have the tools that are necessary to protect the integrity of the electoral process. [We] believe that this Court's decision in Buckley v. Valeo is not properly read to establish a per se prohibition on mandatory campaign spending limits. But if [we] are incorrect in that view, [we] urge the Court to reconsider that decision and permit Vermont to demonstrate that its campaign expenditure limits should survive strict scrutiny. A decision by this Court that the Constitution does not effect an insuperable, per se barrier to campaign spending restrictions will assist the states, as laboratories of democracy, in addressing widespread public dissatisfaction with the current system of electioneering - a dissatisfaction that is having a corrosive effect on the citizenry's faith in the democratic process and is discouraging voters from participating in state elections.

Congressional Challengers: Heidi Behrens-Benedict, Janice Bowling, and Don Hooper

• Unlimited spending has served as an incredibly effective incumbency-protection system. Incumbents - with the help of political action committees ("PACs") - consistently and thoroughly out-raise and outspend challengers, especially in the House of Representatives, leading to victories more than 95 percent of the time in the last decade. . . .
• [We] can think of few governmental interests more compelling than vigorous participation and public faith in representative democracy. [We] submit that campaign-spending limits would directly target the threats currently posed to these interests. Therefore, [we] urge this Court to affirm the Second Circuit's ruling that campaign-spending limits like those in Act 64 can be narrowly tailored to serve compelling governmental interests.

Civil Rights Organizations: Equal Justice Society, National Association for the Advance of Colored People, Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, Latino Issues Forum, Greenlining Institute, Asian American Justice Center, Center for Governmental Studies, California Clean Money Campaign, Coalition for Economic Equity, and California Women's Agenda

• It is the unified position of the organizations who respectfully file this brief that the single greatest obstacle to the ability of communities, municipalities, counties, states and Congress to redress the exclusion of communities of color from the political process is the notion that Buckley v. Valeo absolutely bars any attempt to balance the rights of candidates to express freely their ideas with the rights of citizens to participate meaningfully in the political process. Local, state and national electorates have a strong and compelling interest in promoting greater diversity among political participants, preventing corruption and the appearance of corruption, and fostering a belief in the openness and fairness of our form of government - interests best served by contribution and expenditure limits carefully calibrated to respect candidates' rights of expression.

Former ACLU leaders: Norman Dorsen, Aryeh Neier, Burt Neuborne, John Shattuck, Helen Hershkoff, and Charles S. Sims

• . . . the inability to place generous ceilings on campaign expenditures places candidates in a classic prisoner's dilemma, trapping many candidates in an electoral version of the nuclear arms spiral, in which rival candidates are forced to raise and spend additional campaign funds (even though neither wishes to do so) because of a rational fear that unilateral financial disarmament will enable an opponent to gain a competitive advantage. . . .
• While some candidates have a First Amendment interest in expending unlimited sums in seeking to overwhelm an opponent, most candidates and voters have important competing First Amendment interests that are jeopardized by unlimited campaign spending. These include an opponent's First Amendment interest in being heard over the din of a candidate with massively superior financing; a voter's First Amendment interest in hearing both sides of a political issue before voting; a citizen's First Amendment interest in a government that does not appear to be bought and paid for; and, most importantly, the First Amendment interests of the vast bulk of candidate who wish, at some point, to stop raising funds and to concentrate on substance, but who are unable to do so because they are trapped in a classic arms race spiral, driven by a fear that unilateral financial disarmament may be lethal.

Reclaim Democracy.org

• All democracies must separate the realms of two different decision-making processes. First, a political arena of equal citizenship and political democracy, characterized by the fundamental principle of one person, one vote. Second, a market arena of individual decision and regulation by price, where the anti-discrimination principle of equal access to markets co-exists with necessarily unequal wealth and economic power. Indeed, the separation of the spheres of market and law is basic to the rule of law itself: both the Fourteenth Amendment and fundamental principles of justice dating back at least to Leviticus 19:15 teach that the law should favor neither rich nor poor. . . .
• Vermont's statute limiting the influence of money on elections is an attempt to embody these basic norms in its electoral system in order to prevent democracy from degenerating into plutocracy.

Democratic National Committee

• Buckley v. Valeo did not foreclose the possibility that campaign expenditure limits could survive the "exacting scrutiny" test, if the government could show that such limits serve compelling governmental interests, not considered in Buckley, and are narrowly tailored to serve those interests. . . .
• The Court has afforded legislative bodies deference when they make decisions protecting the political process. Such deference is especially warranted in this case. ... in enacting Act 64 elected officials have not restricted the spending of other participants in the political process, but rather have decided to restrict their own spending in order to enhance participation in and access to the political process by their constituents, thereby restoring the faith of ordinary citizens in their democracy.

U.S. Senators John McCain and Russell Feingold, and U.S. Representatives Christopher Shays and Martin Meehan

• This Court should decline at this stage in the litigation to review the constitutionality of Vermont's expenditure limits and should reject the invitation to revisit its holding in Buckley concerning expenditure limits. The court of appeals neither sustained nor struck down Vermont's expenditure limits; instead, it remanded the case to the district court for further fact-finding and analysis regarding whether those limits are narrowly tailored. Those further proceedings may pretermit the need for this Court to engage in constitutional adjudication which should not be embarked upon unnecessarily or prematurely.

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