July 14, 2025

The Courts

Election Law Blog: Preliminary Injunction Against Maine Foreign Influence Initiative Upheld By First Circuit

By Guy Charles

.....A panel of the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit affirmed a district court’s preliminary injunction against a Maine ballot initiative that prohibited “foreign governments and ‘foreign government-influenced entit[ies] from contributing or otherwise influencing candidate elections and ballot initiatives.” The district court granted the plaintiffs’ preliminary injunction motion on the ground that a substantial application of the statute was unconstitutional and that plaintiffs were likely to succeed on the merits. In a 47-page opinion, Judge Lara Montecalvo upheld the lower court’s decision.

Jonesing on Nonprofits: Freedom Path, Inc. v. IRS: Issue Advocacy or Campaign Intervention?

By Darryll K. Jones

.....There is a case in the DC Circuit that has been pending well nigh five years now. The Court heard arguments on motions for summary judgment only just last week. The parties argued over whether a (c)(4)’s political ads (one set out above and one below) contained “issue advocacy” or “campaign intervention.” Two much of the latter precludes (c)(4) exemption.

 Politico: State Department official defends canceling visas of pro-Palestinian academics

By Josh Gerstein

.....A top State Department official vigorously defended the Trump administration’s drive to cancel the visas of pro-Palestinian academics, arguing that the effort does not abridge free speech and targets students who are supporting terrorism or promoting antisemitism.

John Armstrong, State’s top consular official, testified Friday at a trial in a lawsuit accusing the Trump administration of pursuing an unconstitutional “ideological deportation” policy. He denied that such an initiative is underway.

Ballot Access News: Ninth Circuit Says No Labels Can’t Keep Individual Party Members from Filing to Run in its Primary for Office Other than President

By Richard Winger

.... On July 11, the Ninth Circuit issued an opinion in No Labels Party of Arizona v Fontes, 24-563. It reversed the U.S. District Court and said that No Labels has no right to tell the Secretary of State to block anyone from filing for partisan office in the No Labels primary.  Here is the 28-page opinion. The author is Judge Salvador Mendoza, Jr, a Biden appointee. It is also signed by Judge Holly A. Thomas and Judge Anthony Johnstone, who are also both Biden appointees.

The opinion is a defeat for the freedom of association rights of political parties, but a win for the ability of voters to vote for the candidate of their choice. The chief precedent that influenced the decision is a 2008 decision of the Ninth Circuit that said the Alaskan Independence Party had no right to exclude a particular candidate from filing to run in the AIP’s primary. The new No Labels decision, minimizing party rights, is philosophically completely different from a recent Eleventh Circuit remand opinion that said the Catoosa County Republican Party (in Georgia) may have the right to exclude candidates from its primary...

Here is a news story about the decision.

Reason (Volokh Conspiracy): Free Speech Coalition Brings Text, History, and Tradition to the Free Speech Clause

By Josh Blackman

.....In many regards, this case is confounding. I think the Texas law is constitutional under any standard of review--rational basis, intermediate scrutiny, or strict scrutiny. And I think that Justice Kagan likely agrees on that point, though I doubt that her two colleagues would uphold the law under strict scrutiny. The only debate concerns the appropriate standard of review. I think the Fifth Circuit rightly found that this law is best reviewed with rational basis scrutiny. And I suspect that Justice Thomas agrees with the Fifth Circuit. Indeed, the first half of his opinion sounds as if the law will be reviewed deferentially.

Free Expression

City Journal: After Disinformation

By Andrey Mir

.....If the war on disinformation—as we knew it—has ended, a postmortem is in order. The concept served the progressive Left well, first as a way to explain Trump’s 2016 victory, and then as a tool to suppress inconvenient stories. But it came at a steep cost: the war on disinformation ultimately became a war on truth.

New York Post: Fired doctor grovels after her foul post suggesting flood victims were Trump supporters who got ‘what they voted for’ sparked outrage

By Patrick Reilly

.....The pediatrician who claimed the Texas flood victims were Trump supporters who got “what they voted for” has issued a groveling apology after being canceled and fired.

The States

New Jersey Monitor: Electioneering can be banned within 200 feet of NJ polling place under new law

By Sophie Nieto-Munoz 

.....County boards of elections can double the distance where electioneering is prohibited outside of polling booths and ballot boxes under a bill signed into law by Gov. Phil Murphy this week. 

The new law, approved by lawmakers in the final weeks before the Legislature’s summer recess, allows election officials to bar electioneering within 200 feet of the outside entrance of any polling place or ballot drop box while voters are casting ballots. Current law bars electioneering within 100 feet of a polling place.

Party officials said they don’t think an expanded ban is necessary.

“These days, in the days of social media, people can reach you inside the polling place on your phone. Unless they were being obtrusive, I don’t see any reason why it has to be even banned in the 100-feet area,” said Peg Schaffer, chair of the Somerset County Democratic Party and vice chair of the statewide party. “I think it’s potentially an invasion of free speech, and I’m hoping my county board doesn’t do it.”

Politico: Eric Adams loses lawsuit against local election body — and his team is thrilled

By Joe Anuta

.....A federal judge on Friday dismissed a lawsuit brought by New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who had sought to compel the release of $3.5 million in public matching funds to his reelection campaign.

Despite the loss, the mayor’s legal team was thrilled.

In a 61-page decision, United States District Judge Nicholas Garaufis sided with the New York City Campaign Finance Board, which opted to withhold the matching funds from Adams in December.

“The court finds that the CFB provided two independent valid grounds for denying the Adams Campaign public matching funds,” Garaufis wrote in his decision.

Those two reasons were: The Adams camp did not respond in a timely manner to a records request from the board and blew through a deadline to file a financial disclosure form.

Maine Morning Star: Maine Legislature opts for status quo on campaign finance regulations

By Emma Davis

.....The Maine Legislature largely opted to maintain the status quo regarding campaign finance regulations this year, rejecting attempts to expand clean elections, require more transparency into who is spending in elections and ban direct corporate contributions to candidates.  

The most common reasons cited by lawmakers, who voted down many of these bills in committee before the proposals even reached the chambers, were the tight budget year and that the plans didn’t get to the root causes of money in politics.

“We really took this as that campaign finance reform was not a priority at all during this legislative session in a time where money and politics is rampant and at an all time high,” said Al Cleveland, advocacy director for Democracy Maine, a collaboration of nonpartisan organizations focused on making government more equitable.

Before the Legislature’s Veterans and Legal Affairs Committee voted down one of the bills that sought to require the disclosure of the original source of what’s frequently referred to as “dark money,” discussion illuminated a sense of resignation on this topic held by lawmakers.

Politico: OpenAI accuses nonprofit of Musk ties, lobbying violations, in California complaint

By Chase DiFeliciantonio and Christine Mui

.....OpenAI is asking California’s political finance watchdog to investigate a nonprofit that challenged its multi-billion-dollar business plans, alleging violations of state lobbying laws and again raising questions about the group’s connections to rival Elon Musk.

The complaint to the California Fair Political Practices Commission, first obtained by POLITICO, accuses the Coalition for AI Nonprofit Integrity of likely fronting a fake leader and failing to report lobbying payments related to a now-gutted state bill that would have potentially prevented the ChatGPT maker from converting to a for-profit entity.