Supreme Court

5-4 vote, the court overturns a 20-year-old ruling that prohibited corperations/unions/PACs from using money from their general treasuries to produce and run their own campaign ads.

staying in place is a prohibition on direct contributions to candidates from corporations/unions.

I haven't read the opinions or the statute, just some of the articles/blog postings on today's ruling. But wasn't the ban just on the TIMING of the speech, not a complete prohibition on the speech? Again, I am uninformed on this, but that was my impression. That corps/unions/PACs could use their general treasury monies to produce their own campaign ads under the law, just not within 30 days before the election.

(01-21-2010 04:44 PM)mrbig Wrote:  I haven't read the opinions or the statute, just some of the articles/blog postings on today's ruling. But wasn't the ban just on the TIMING of the speech, not a complete prohibition on the speech? Again, I am uninformed on this, but that was my impression. That corps/unions/PACs could use their general treasury monies to produce their own campaign ads under the law, just not within 30 days before the election.

I haven't read it all either, but I suspect the nub was that the statute was not a content-neutral timing restriction, but a content-based timing restriction, which is the problem.

It's one thing to say "You can't use a bullhorn after 9 PM." That's an archetypal time-place-manner restriction that has long been held to be OK. It's another to say "You can't use a bullhorn to talk about politics after 9 PM."

I dealt with a "free speech" issue recently in D.C. Every morning, some group of neer-do-wells gathered near my hotel to protest some construction project. Their protest consisted mainly of banging on cowbells for 8 hours. To me as a hotel guest -- and I suspect to anyone who worked in a nearby office building -- it was damn annoying. And somehow, the fact that deliberate annoyance was their very purpose (as opposed to, say, a cowbell choir having daily practice) made it even more annoying.

I started thinking about how one might draft a content-neutral ordinance to get rid of those antics. I think you could come close, but it would be tricky. In any case, what really hit home was this: regardless of laws and rights, it's too bad those guys couldn't just think a little bit -- be a little less narcissistic about their own "cause" and a little more considerate of their fellow citizens.

(01-21-2010 06:22 PM)georgewebb Wrote:  I started thinking about how one might draft a content-neutral ordinance to get rid of those antics. I think you could come close, but it would be tricky. In any case, what really hit home was this: regardless of laws and rights, it's too bad those guys couldn't just think a little bit -- be a little less narcissistic about their own "cause" and a little more considerate of their fellow citizens.

How about a cowbell-registration ordance, requiring a 10 hour school in proper cowbell usuage and a $500 registration fee?

(01-21-2010 06:22 PM)georgewebb Wrote:  I haven't read it all either, but I suspect the nub was that the statute was not a content-neutral timing restriction, but a content-based timing restriction, which is the problem.

Getting all legal on me, I wasn't trying to get into the analysis, just the practical application!