Day v. Hayes

• Decision Date: 27 May 1994
• Docket Number: 3-93-876.,Civ. No. 3-93-857
• Citation: 863 F. Supp. 940
• Parties: Scott DAY, Treasurer of IMPACE-MEA; IMPACE-MEA; and Steve Frazier and Richard Kimbler, Plaintiffs, v. Vanne Owens HAYES, in her capacity as Chair of the Ethical Practices Board, Defendant. MINNESOTA CITIZENS CONCERNED FOR LIFE, INC.; Jacqueline A. Schwietz, Treasurer of Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life Committee for State Pro-Life Candidates; Eileen Angell, Mitchell Hoyt Unruh, and Lori Erickson, Plaintiffs, v. Vanne Owens HAYES, as Chair of the State Ethical Practices Board; and Hubert Humphrey III, as Attorney General of the State of Minnesota, Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Minnesota

863 F. Supp. 940

Scott DAY, Treasurer of IMPACE-MEA; IMPACE-MEA; and Steve Frazier and Richard Kimbler, Plaintiffs, v. Vanne Owens HAYES, in her capacity as Chair of the Ethical Practices Board, Defendant.

MINNESOTA CITIZENS CONCERNED FOR LIFE, INC.; Jacqueline A. Schwietz, Treasurer of Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life Committee for State Pro-Life Candidates; Eileen Angell, Mitchell Hoyt Unruh, and Lori Erickson, Plaintiffs, v. Vanne Owens HAYES, as Chair of the State Ethical Practices Board; and Hubert Humphrey III, as Attorney General of the State of Minnesota, Defendants.

Civ. Nos. 3-93-857, 3-93-876.

United States District Court, D. Minnesota, Third Division.

May 27, 1994.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Eric Raymond Miller, Oppenheimer Wolff & Donnelly, Harley M. Ogata, MN Educ. Assoc., St. Paul, MN, for plaintiffs.

Jocelyn Furtwangler Olson, Minnesota Atty. Gen., St. Paul, MN, for defendant.

MEMORANDUM & ORDER

MAGNUSON, District Judge.

This matter is before the Court upon Plaintiffs' Motions for Summary Judgment. The Court has given these motions expedited consideration due to the significant implications of the challenged statutes in the imminent Minnesota primary and general elections. For the following reasons, the Court grants the motions in part and denies them in part and enters partial judgment in favor of the Plaintiffs and partial judgment in favor of the Defendants.

BACKGROUND

Responding to concerns about the financing of political campaigns and the potential for and perception of corruption of the political process through undue influence of large financial contributors, the 1993 Minnesota Legislature significantly amended state laws governing political campaigns and the financing of those campaigns.¹ The new statute, inter alia, (i) provides incentives for candidates to accept voluntary spending limits including public subsidies to candidates who accept the limits and meet other eligibility criteria; (ii) reduces the amounts of contributions candidates may accept from political committees, political funds, lobbyists and certain individuals; (iii) limits the amount of contributions a political committee or fund may accept from a single donor in a year; (iv) imposes reporting requirements on persons and entities making "independent expenditures" and (v) provides for public subsidies to some candidates who have such independent expenditures made against them. See Minn.Stat. Chapter 10A (Supp.1993) (scattered provisions). The 1993 Legislature also amended Minn.Stat. § 211B.15, a statute that prohibits corporations from making certain types of campaign contributions and expenditures. Plaintiff MCCL, Inc. challenges several provisions of the statute as amended.

The Plaintiffs brought suit seeking to invalidate several provisions of the above-described laws on December 20, 1993.² They challenge the constitutionality of provisions of the law that require reporting of independent expenditures and provide for corresponding subsidies to candidates who meet certain conditions; a provision limiting individual contributions to political funds and committees to $100 per year; and the corporate contribution and expenditure prohibitions, as applied to Plaintiff MCCL, Inc. Both groups of Plaintiffs seek declaratory judgment that the challenged provisions of Minn.Stat. § 10A violate the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution and seek to permanently enjoin the Defendants from enforcing the challenged statutes. In addition, Plaintiff MCCL, Inc. seeks a declaration that Minn. Stat. § 211B (the "Campaign Act") is unconstitutional and seeks to enjoin Defendants from enforcing the statute against it. The Court denied the Plaintiffs' motions for preliminary injunction on January 5, 1994. Both groups of Plaintiffs now seek summary judgment.

DISCUSSION

Summary judgment is appropriate if there is no genuine issue of material fact and the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. Fed.R.Civ.P. 56(c); Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, 477 U.S. 317, 106 S.Ct. 2548, 91 L.Ed.2d 265 (1986); Unigroup, Inc. v. O'Rourke Storage & Transfer Co., 980 F.2d 1217, 1219-20 (8th Cir.1992). A court may grant summary judgment in favor of a nonmoving party. See Hvamstad v. Suhler, 727 F.Supp. 511 (D.Minn.1989), aff'd, 915 F.2d 1218 (8th Cir.1990); see also, Celotex, 477 U.S. at 326, 106 S.Ct. at 2554 ("District courts are widely acknowledged to possess the power to enter summary judgments sua sponte, so long as the losing party was on notice that she had to come forward with all of her evidence.") The parties are in agreement as to essentially all material facts and have agreed that this matter should be decided in summary fashion based on the existing record. See Johnson v. Bismarck Public School Dist., 949 F.2d 1000, 1004-05 (8th Cir.1991) (when parties agree that issues should be decided in summary fashion, judgment in favor of either moving party or nonmoving party is permissible). Hence, the Court's task here is to determine questions of law and enter judgment in this matter.

I. Justiciability³

At the time of the Court's denial of Plaintiffs' motions for preliminary injunction, it was not clear that the Plaintiffs had alleged sufficient interests and facts to confer standing and to make the case ripe for this Court's review. In the interim, Plaintiffs have remedied those arguable deficiencies by adding several individual Plaintiffs and by alleging facts sufficient to show that candidates they oppose will likely be eligible for public subsidy in the coming election cycle. However, it bears repeating that the mere making and reporting of an independent expenditure by a person or group opposed to a candidate is not sufficient to qualify that candidate for a public subsidy. In order to qualify for a public subsidy based on an independent expenditure made against her, a candidate must have previously accepted voluntary spending limits, must meet public subsidy eligibility requirements, and must have raised twice the minimum match otherwise required. See Minn.Stat. § 10A.25 subd. 13.⁴

Plaintiff Steve Frazier contends he is entitled to challenge this law both as a taxpayer and as an ordinary citizen. Frazier argues that Minn.Stat. § 10A.25 violates his First Amendment rights by effectively forcing him to subsidize a candidate he opposes through government expenditure of funds it obtains through the state income tax. Because Frazier is a Minnesota taxpayer, he contributes to the collective pool of state funds whence the State would draw funds to pay subsidies to eligible candidates under Chapter 10A.

Generally, suits based on taxpayer status and ideological injury arising from that status are not cognizable in federal court. See ASARCO, Inc. v. Kadish, 490 U.S. 605, 613, 109 S.Ct. 2037, 2043, 104 L.Ed.2d 696 (1989). Taxpayers are generally not allowed to bring suits to challenge laws of general applicability based on their taxpayer status because their injury is not separate and "distinct from that suffered by other taxpayers ..." Id. The Supreme Court carved an exception to the prohibition on such "taxpayer standing" in Flast v. Cohen, 392 U.S. 83, 88 S.Ct. 1942, 20 L.Ed.2d 947 (1968). However, subsequent cases have effectively delineated the very narrow scope of that exception — the Supreme Court has found taxpayer standing only when the taxpayer challenges government spending alleged to violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. It has rejected taxpayer standing in every other case originally brought in federal court. See, e.g., United States v. Richardson, 418 U.S. 166, 94 S.Ct. 2940, 41 L.Ed.2d 678 (1974); Valley Forge Christian College v. Americans United for Sep. of Church & State, 454 U.S. 464, 102 S.Ct. 752, 70 L.Ed.2d 700 (1982); see also Bowen v. Kendrick, 487 U.S. 589, 108 S.Ct. 2562, 101 L.Ed.2d 520 (1988); Marsh v. Chambers, 463 U.S. 783, 103 S.Ct. 3330, 77 L.Ed.2d 1019 (1983) (establishment clause challenges); cf. ASARCO, 490 U.S. at 616-24, 109 S.Ct. at 2044-49 (1989) (allowing standing for Supreme Court review of action brought in state court, though standing would not exist if action originally brought in federal court).

Frazier does not allege an injury arising from the challenged statutes that is distinguishable from the generalized injury suffered by innumerable taxpayers who disagree with government expenditures of tax-generated funds. As the Supreme Court noted more than seventy years ago, suits based on a taxpayer's generalized grievance are not justiciable in federal court because the taxpayer's

interest in the moneys of the Treasury — partly realized from taxation and partly from other sources — is shared with millions of others, is comparatively minute and indeterminable; and the effect upon future taxation, of any payments out of the funds, so remote, fluctuating and uncertain, that no basis is afforded for judicial intervention.

Frothingham v. Mellon, 262 U.S. 447, 487, 43 S.Ct. 597, 601, 67 L.Ed. 1078 (1923). Further, Frazier does not allege that the challenged statutes violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment and thus does not fit within the narrow exception to the general prohibition against taxpayer standing. Accordingly, the Court finds Frazier lacks taxpayer standing.

Frazier more likely has general citizen standing to challenge Chapter 10A, because he is a member of and contributor to IMPACE-MEA. However, his challenge based on that status is indistinguishable from the challenge brought by other individual parties to these suits and the Court need not separately discuss that aspect of Frazier's challenge.

II. Independent Expenditures Provisions⁵

Plaintiffs challenge the "independent expenditures" provisions of Chapter 10A, which provide, in pertinent part:

Subd. 6b. Independent expenditures; notice.

(a) Within 24 hours after an individual, political committee, or political fund makes or becomes obligated by oral or

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