CAMPAIGN REFORM LAW ‘CRIMINALIZES’ LEGAL SPEECH—NAB, SENATOR
NAB Fri. joined other appeals already filed in U.S. Appeals Court, D.C., seeking to overturn provisions of Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, charging new law would “in good part criminalize core political speech.” Earlier appeal was filed by 27 plaintiffs -- led by bill’s principal opponent on Senate floor, Sen. McConnell (R-Ky.) -- who charged it “would radically alter, in a fundamental and unconstitutional fashion, the ways citizens, labor unions, trade associations [etc.] are permitted to participate in our nation’s democratic process.” Law goes into effect Nov. 6, following next fall’s elections.
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NAB, in pleading filed by outside counsel Floyd Abrams of N.Y. law firm Cahill, Gordon & Reindel, charged new restrictions on campaign financing and use of TV “contravenes more than a quarter century of unbroken Supreme Court and lower court precedent… The scope of the statutory bar [to law’s provisions] is vast.” NAB said new law not only “criminalizes constitutionally protected speech broadcast on television and radio but does so in a constitutionally destructive manner, barring speech… that the statute permits to be published in the print media.”
Particularly of concern to Assn. is prohibition on political issue ads on TV 60 days before general elections and 30 days before primaries. Because of Presidential caucuses and primaries, blackout period “can eat up much of the year,” NAB told court: “Congress lacks power under the First Amendment to bar such speech in any medium of communication and cannot, in any event, electively choose to bar it in one form of media while allowing it in another.”
McConnell’s group, which includes Reps. Pence (R-Ind.) and Barr (R-Ga.), said law “dramatically extends the scope” of authority of Federal Elections Commission and FCC “in a manner that violates several provisions of the Constitution.” Political speech, group said, has been “long and correctly viewed as entitled to the highest degree of First Amendment protection.”