The recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling to strike down the trigger provision in Arizona's campaign finance law affirms the successful result achieved by the ACLU of Connecticut on behalf of the Green Party and others when it challenged similar trigger provisions in Connecticut's campaign finance law.
The ACLU of Connecticut and the ACLU national office claimed that the "trigger provisions," in Connecticut's law, which awarded money to publicly funded candidates based on the private spending of their opponents, penalized candidates and parties who could not qualify for public funding or chose not to use it. The ACLU prevailed in federal district court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on this claim, and the Connecticut General Assembly subsequently modified the law to remove those trigger provisions.
While the Supreme Court ruling in the Arizona case reinforces the ACLU of Connecticut's victory on campaign trigger provisions, the court almost simultaneously denied the ACLU's request for review of other aspects of its challenge to Connecticut's campaign finance law. As the law still stands, minor party candidates must meet a more rigorous test than Democratic or Republican candidates to qualify for public funds. Not only must minor party candidates meet the same fundraising thresholds as major party candidates, they must also meet standards of gaining voter support in previous elections or in gathering petition signatures -- requirements from which the major party candidates are exempt.
The ACLU had sought also to invalidate a secondary trigger that provides publicly funded major party candidates with additional grants nearly 70 percent greater than their original grant when an opposing minor party candidate's fundraising reaches a minimum threshold. This secondary trigger reinforces and further tilts the playing field against minor party candidates under Connecticut's campaign finance law, creating a potential one-way subsidy to the major parties that is still in force.
"This means that a minor party candidate running for state senate in one of the State's many single party districts will increase the size of his opponent's grant from $51,000 to $85,000 if he raises a single dollar more than $15,000," according to the ACLU's petition for Supreme Court review.
Andrew Schneider, executive director of the ACLU-CT, noted that the Second Circuit decision left open the possibility of a later challenge based on a different factual record. "The ACLU will continue to monitor elections," he said. "Not a single minor party candidate qualified for public funds in 2010 and if that pattern holds the courts may be persuaded to have another look at the uneven playing field for minor party candidates."
For more information [these links will take you away from the ACLU of Connecticut's website]:
U.S. Supreme Court Opinion: Arizona Free Enterprise Club's Freedom Club PAC et al. v. Bennett, Secretary of State of Arizona, et al.
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit Opinion: Green Party of Connecticut v. Garfield
U.S. District Court, District of Connecticut, Memorandum of Deceision: Green Party of Connecticut, et al. v. Jeffrey Garfield, et al.
