RNC v. FEC (97-1552)

On April 7, 1998, the parties to this suit agreed to dismiss this case with prejudice and to pay their own legal expenses. The Republican National Committee (RNC) had asked the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to find that the FEC's dismissal of an administrative complaint it had filed with the agency was contrary to law.

In its initial administrative complaint, filed in 1995, the RNC had charged that the Democratic National Committee (DNC) had used impermissible nonfederal funds to pay all the expenses of a nationwide media campaign that highlighted the party's legislative proposals for health care reform. Commission regulations require that if a political committee has both federal and nonfederal accounts, then it must allocate its administrative and generic expenses between those two accounts. 11 CFR 102.5. The Commission did not have four votes to proceed against the DNC and, therefore, voted unanimously to close the case. The RNC had filed this lawsuit in response to that vote.

Source:   FEC Record — June 1998