US Supreme Court rejects challenge to Alaska campaign finance law By Reuters

By Nate Raymond (NS:)

(Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court declined on Monday to hear a challenge based on constitutional free speech protections to a voter-approved measure in Alaska that required greater public disclosure of certain political donations as the justices passed up a chance to further curtail campaign finance regulation.

The justices turned away an appeal by several Alaskan residents and advocacy groups, represented by a conservative legal group, of a lower court’s ruling upholding the law narrowly approved as a ballot initiative in 2020.

The initiative, called Ballot Measure 2, adopted sweeping changes to the state’s elections system. The plaintiffs objected to what they called some of the most stringent disclosure requirements in the United States on political donors.

The voters adopted a non-partisan open primary system, a method called ranked-choice voting for the general elections in which voters rank candidates in order of preference, and a series of changes to Alaska’s campaign-finance laws to address the use of “dark money” in elections. The term “dark money” generally refers to election spending by certain organizations that do not disclose the identity of their donors, leaving voters in the dark as to who is trying to influence them.

The case before the U.S. Supreme Court, pursued by the conservative legal group Liberty Justice Center, involved only a challenge to the campaign-finance requirements of the Alaska measure. The plaintiffs argued that the Alaska disclosure requirements violate the rights of donors under the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment, which protects against governmental abridgment of free speech.

The Supreme Court in a landmark 2010 ruling in a case called Citizens United v. FEC invalidated longstanding campaign finance restrictions and enabled corporations and other outside groups such as unions to spend unlimited funds on elections. The court found that such restrictions violated the First Amendment.

The Citizens United ruling and subsequent Supreme Court decisions helped usher in an era of unprecedented spending in U.S. elections.

The provisions in the 2020 ballot measure marked a significant tightening of Alaska’s laws after the state ceased restricting who could make independent expenditures supporting or opposing candidates following the Citizens United decision.

The new Alaska law required anyone who contributes $2,000 or more annually to an organization making independent expenditures to support…