Service Employees Intern. Union, AFL-CIO, CLC v. Fair Political Practice Com'n
| Decision Date | 07 February 1992 |
| Docket Number | 90-16200 and 90-16372,AFL-CI,Nos. 89-15771,CLC,s. 89-15771 |
| Citation | 955 F.2d 1312 |
| Parties | SERVICE EMPLOYEES INTERNATIONAL UNION,; California State Council of Service Employees/COPE; California Teachers Association; California Teachers Association for Better Citizenship Political Action Committee; Committee to Protect the Political Rights of Minorities; Willie L. Brown; Willie L. Brown Campaign Committee; Friends of David Roberti; Friends of John Burton; John Burton; Alice Huffman; Michael Ross; Allen Ruby, Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. FAIR POLITICAL PRACTICES COMMISSION, Defendant, and Quentin L. Kopp; Ross Johnson, Defendants-Intervenors-Appellants. SERVICE EMPLOYEES INTERNATIONAL UNION,; California State Council of Service Employees/COPE; California Teachers Association; California Teachers Association for Better Citizenship Political Action Committee; Committee to Protect the Political Rights of Minorities; Willie L. Brown; Willie L. Brown Campaign Committee; Friends of David Roberti; Friends of John Burton; John Burton; Alice Huffman; Michael Ross; Allen Ruby, Plaintiffs-Appellees, California Democratic Party, an incorporated association, Plaintiff in Intervention-Appellee, v. Quentin L. KOPP; Ross Johnson, Defendants-Intervenors-Appellants, and Fair Political Practices Commission, Defendant-Intervenor. SERVICE EMPLOYEES INTERNATIONAL UNION,; California State Council of Service Employees/COPE; California Teachers Association; California Teachers Association for Better Citizenship Political Action Committee; Committee to Protect the Political Rights of Minorities; Willie L. Brown; Willie L. Brown Campaign Committee; Friends of David Roberti; Friends of John Burton; John Burton; Alice Huffman; Michael Ross; Allen Ruby, Plaintiffs-Appellees, California Democratic Party, an incorporated association, Plaintiff-Intervenor-Appellee, v. FAIR POLITICAL PRACTICES COMMISSION, Defendant-Appellant, and Quentin L. Kopp; Ross Johnson, Defendants-Intervenors. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit |
Scott Hallabrin, Acting Gen. Counsel, Fair Political Practices Com'n, Sacramento, Cal., for defendant-appellant.
L. Michael Bogert, Sacramento, Cal., Quentin L. Kopp, Kopp & Di Franco, San Francisco, Cal., for defendants-in-intervention-appellants.
Julie M. Randolph, Remcho, Johansen & Purcell, San Francisco, Cal., for plaintiffs-appellees.
Calvin House, Fulbright & Jaworski, Los Angeles, Cal., for plaintiff-in-intervention-appellee.
Bradley S. Phillips, Munger, Tolles & Olson, Los Angeles, Cal., for amicus curiae Common Cause.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of California.
Before POOLE, NORRIS and WIGGINS, Circuit Judges.
Opinion by Judge Norris; Dissent by Judge Wiggins.
This appeal requires us to decide the constitutionality of certain provisions of Proposition 73, a campaign financing reform measure for elections to state and local offices that was approved by California voters in 1988. 1 Appellants are the California Fair Political Practices Commission ("FPPC"), which was named as a defendant in the action below, and the authors of Proposition 73, Assemblyman Ross Johnson and Senator Quentin Kopp ("Authors"), who intervened as parties defendant. Appellees are the Service Employees International Union, other labor organizations, elected officials, and individual campaign contributors, the plaintiffs that brought the action, and the California Democratic Party, which intervened as a party plaintiff.
Proposition 73 limits the amount individuals and groups may contribute to candidates for state and local office each fiscal year. 2 Appellees do not, however, focus their constitutional attack on Proposition 73's contribution limits per se. Instead they focus on the fact that Proposition 73 limits the amount a contributor may give during each fiscal year rather than following the federal model 3 of limiting the amount a contributor may give during each election cycle. Appellees argue that in tying the contribution limits to fiscal years, Proposition 73 discriminates in favor of incumbents and their supporters and against challengers and their supporters for a very practical reason: Challengers do not typically decide to run for office years in advance of the election. As a result, they are unable to engage in fundraising during each fiscal year between elections as incumbents commonly do. Thus, for example, an incumbent state legislator may tap an individual contributor for $1,000 in each fiscal year of her four-year term, while a potential opponent cannot realistically do the same until the fiscal years in which the primary and general elections occur. As a result, appellees conclude, Proposition 73 effectively limits the contributions of an individual who chooses to support a non-incumbent to $1,000 in each of two fiscal years, while an individual who chooses to support an incumbent may contribute $1,000 in each of four fiscal years.
After a six-day bench trial, the district court agreed with appellees that limiting contributions on a fiscal year basis unconstitutionally discriminated against challengers. The district court found that incumbents "raise substantial amounts of money each of the years of incumbency, while as a general matter challengers cannot, and generally do not, do so." Service Employees International Union v. Fair Political Practices Commission, 747 F.Supp. 580, 588 (E.D.Cal.1990). Because the district court held that the fiscal year provisions of Proposition 73 were not severable from the contribution limitations themselves, it struck down the contribution limitations under the First and Fourteenth Amendments and permanently enjoined their enforcement. Id. at 593-94.
Appellees also challenged three provisions of Proposition 73 in addition to the fiscal year contribution limitations. First, appellees challenged Proposition 73's carry-over provision, which prohibits the expenditure of campaign funds raised prior to January 1989. On a partial motion for summary judgment, the district court held that this provision constituted an unconstitutional expenditure limitation and permanently enjoined its enforcement. Service Employees International Union v. Fair Political Practices Commission, 721 F.Supp. 1172 (E.D.Cal.1989).
Appellees also challenged Proposition 73's ban on intra-candidate transfers: transfers of funds between controlled committees of a single candidate. Cal.Gov't Code § 85304. After trial, the court held that this provision was also an unconstitutional expenditure limitation. Service Employees International Union, 747 F.Supp. at 591. Finally, appellees challenged Proposition 73's ban on inter-candidate transfers: transfers of funds between candidates. Cal.Gov't Code § 85304. Analyzing this provision as a contribution limitation as opposed to an expenditure limitation, the district court ruled that the ban was unconstitutional because it served no purpose once Proposition 73's contribution limitations had been declared unconstitutional. 747 F.Supp. at 591-93. The district court permanently enjoined enforcement of both the intra-candidate and the inter-candidate transfer bans. Id. at 593-94. 4 Appellants defend the constitutionality of every provision of Proposition 73, except that appellant FPPC does not appeal the district court's invalidation of the carry-over ban.
Before we consider the question whether limiting campaign contributions on a fiscal year basis unconstitutionally discriminates in favor of incumbents and against challengers, we must first address two threshold questions raised by appellants: (1) that appellees lack standing to raise the question of discrimination against challengers because none of them is a challenger, 5 and (2) that the district court's findings of fact on the issue of discrimination are clearly erroneous. See Fed.R.Civ.P. 52(a).
Appellants argue that appellees lack standing to question the constitutionality of a law that discriminates against challengers because no appellee is a challenger. However, we reject this argument because appellees have standing to assert their own rights as contributors. As the district court pointed out, 747 F.Supp. at 588, the Supreme Court held in Buckley v. Valeo that contributing money is an act of political association that is protected by the First Amendment because the act of contributing serves to associate the contributor with a candidate as well as with like-minded contributors. 424 U.S. 1, 22, 96 S.Ct. 612, 636, 46 L.Ed.2d 659 (1976) (per curiam). If Proposition 73 discriminates against challengers by limiting their opportunities to accept contributions, then it necessarily discriminates against contributors who wish to associate themselves with challengers. Appellees therefore have standing to assert their own associational rights and to challenge the fiscal year contribution limits as discriminatory. See Renne v. Geary, --- U.S. ----, 111 S.Ct. 2331, 2338, 115 L.Ed.2d 288 (1991) ().
We now turn to appellants' argument that the district court's findings of fact on the issue of discrimination are clearly erroneous. 6 The district court found that Proposition 73's fiscal year contribution limits tend to discriminate against challengers as a class. Finding 155. While "[i]ncumbents raise a significant amount of their campaign funds early in an election cycle," challengers ...
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Case summaries.
...2002). (471) Tenn. Valley Auth. v. Hill, 437 U.S. 153, 194 (1978). (472) Serv. Employees Int'l Union v. Fair Political Practices Comm'n, 955 F.2d 1312, 1317 n.7 (9th Cir. (473) Biodiversity Legal Found. v. Badgley, 309 F.3d 1166, 1177 (9th Cir. 2002) (citing Tenn. Valley Auth., 437 U.S. at ......