The Christian Civic League of Maine brought suit against the Federal Election Commission in the District of Columbia claiming the League’s First Amendment right “to advocate for support of the Marriage Amendment was being unconstitutionally burdened” after the League was unable to broadcast a radio advertisement supporting the Federal Marriage Protection Amendment. The CCL planned to broadcast an ad identifying Maine’s senators “by name as having ‘unfortunately’ voted against the amendment two years ago” in hopes of putting pressure on the senators to be in favor of the amendment at an upcoming vote. Because of a FEC “electioneering communications” rule, stating corporations cannot use general funds to broadcast any advertisement naming a candidate and targeting relevant voters for a specific amount of time before federal primaries or general elections, the Christian Civic League was not able to broadcast the Marriage Amendment ad on the dates the League wished to: May 10th through early June. The League challenged the FEC rule and their challenge was unanimously rejected by a panel of one federal circuit court of appeals judge and two district court judges.

In a joint opinion, they pointed out that the Supreme Court has upheld the blackout provision against prior challenges involving socalled “issues advertising,” taking the position that Congress could protect federal elections from undue corporate influence by imposing such a rule.

Perhaps more importantly, the court pointed out that the statute left open plenty of alternative ways for the CCL to communicate its message. CCL actually did not have enough money in its own coffers to fund this advertisement, so it had come up with a donor. It could just get its donor to give the money to a political action committee, which would not be barred from broadcasting the ad during the blackout period. Or, it could spend the money to publish the ad in newspapers and magazines in Maine, since the FEC blackout period only applies to broadcast media.

Read more here (“Federal Rules Block Anti-Marriage Ad Broadcast” starts on page 7).