U.S.

Court Scrutiny For Campaign Finance

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

October 10, 2000 / 2:33 PM EDT / CBS

Campaign finance, gun control, and the separation of church and state were among the major issues in a pack of rulings Tuesday from the Supreme Court.

The high court decided that it will hear a case that could have huge implications for campaign fundraising. The case is a challenge of a federal appeals court ruling earlier this year in Colorado, which struck down federal limits on how much money political parties can spend on activities that are coordinated with political candidates.

The Colorado Republican Party argues that such limits are an unfair infringement on the First Amendment right to free speech.

In court papers, the Federal Election Commission and the Justice Department argued that candidates would know where huge influxes of "coordinated expenditures" came from, and once in office might feel beholden to individual party officials.

"There is no reason to believe that such individuals are immune from the corrupting temptations and self-interest of other persons," the government argued. "To the contrary, history demonstrates that individual officials of political organizations are particularly well-suited to exert a corrupting influence upon candidates and officeholders in order to advance their private interests."

The Federal Election Commission limits political parties to spending no more than $13.7 million in coordinated expense to assist their presidential nominees. The FEC has similar limits on coordinated support for House and Senate candidates.

Coordinated expenditures differ from unregulated "soft money" contributions, which are increasingly popular with political parties and outside groups. Soft money may be used for advertisements and other campaign activities to generate support for a candidate without specifically urging voters to vote for them.

The Colorado Republicans say removing limits on coordinated expenditures would have the beneficial effect of reducing party dependence on soft money.

"The court's ruling obviously won't be heard or decided in time to affect the current campaign," notes CBS News Legal Consultant Andrew Cohen, who adds that "if the Justices rule here that federal law doesn't limit political parties in this way, just about every election in the future would be greatly affected."

Both sides in the 14-year-old dispute had asked the Supreme Court to hear the case.

In other action, the high court Tuesday:

Rejected a challenge to a Colorado state ballot initiative that would have required criminal background checks for all weapons purchased at gun shows. Gun-rights advocates had tried to scuttle the referendum, arguing that petition signatures to put the measure on the ballot were improperly gathered. The Supreme Court has ruled that the signatures are valid. That means voters will decide next month on the measure, which was proposed in reaction to the shootings at Columbine High School.
Agreed to hear the appel of a Milford, N.Y., Christian youth group that was banned from using a public school for its after-school meetings. The school turned down the request from The Good News Club, on the grounds that its meetings would be "the equivalent of religious worship...rather than the expression of religious views or values on a secular subject."
The Supreme Court said Tuesday it will decide whether the prohibition violates the group's free speech rights and wrongly allows school officials to decide what constitutes "religious instruction." CBS News Legal Consultant Andrew Cohen points out that the court has previously permitted similar uses of school buildings, so long as the activities in question are not "supported or coordinated by school officials."
Agreed to clarify how long the government can lock up aliens who have been ordered deported, but can't be, for whatever reason. The court will hear arguments in two cases turning on that issue - a Cambodian man convicted of manslaughter in a Seattle gang killing, who couldn't be deported because the U.S. has no deportation treaty with Cambodia, and a Lithuanian man convicted of a drug charge who couldn't be sent back to Lithuania because that country says he's not a citizen.
Let stand a ruling that a lesbian who helped her partner raise twins for two years should have visitation rights now that the couple has split up. The woman who gave birth to the children, becoming pregnant by means of artificial insemination, had asked the high court to reverse a New Jersey Supreme Court ruling ordering visitation, arguing that order "failed to recognize the fundamental rights possessed by parents and...impermissibly invaded the family sphere."
Agreed to clarify whether state officials can be sued in Indian tribal court over actions taken on an Indian reservation. The court will hear the argument from four Nevada wildlife officials who contend that they are immune from being sued in tribal court over the seizure of bighorn sheep trophies from a man's home on a reservation.
Refused to restore valuable broadcast licenses to a wireless communication firm that lost them because it missed payment deadlines. The court, without comment, turned down NextWave Personal Communication's argument that a federal bankruptcy court should allow it to keep the licenses at a much lower cost than it originally promised to pay.
Refused to revive a lawsuit that accused the U.S. Golf Association, governing body of the sport, for unlawfully trying to dominate the business of determining the handicaps of individual golfers. That legal challenge came from Handicomp Inc., a company that has been providing computerized calculations of golfers' handicaps since 1968.