Antosh v. FEC (84-1552 and 84-2737)

On August 30, 1984, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued an order granting the FEC's motion to dismiss Antosh v. FEC (Civil Action No. 84-1552) and denying the plaintiff's motion to file a supplemental complaint. On September 13, 1984 , the court issued an opinion explaining the ruling. Following the court's order, Mr. James E. Antosh filed a second suit with the court on September 6, 1984 (Civil Action No. 84-2737). The second suit included a request by the plaintiff that the district court certify two constitutional claims to the U.S. Court of Appeals.

On January 5, 1988, the court ruled that Mr. Antosh lacked standing in his second suit to seek the court's certification of his constitutional questions to the appeals court. The court granted a motion by the FEC to dismiss the counts of his complaint which included the constitutional questions.

On March 24, 1988, the district court issued an order granting a further motion by the FEC for a summary judgment in the second suit. The court's order dismissed the remaining two counts of Mr. Antosh's complaint.

First suit

Mr. Antosh, a registered voter in Oklahoma, is president of Shawnee Garment Manufacturing, Inc. On December 2, 1983, he filed an administrative complaint with the FEC alleging that the separate segregated funds of three international unions were affiliated with the AFL-CIO's political action committee (PAC)[1] within the meaning of 2 U.S.C. §441a(a)(5). Mr. Antosh claimed that the four political committees had failed to disclose their affiliation in their respective Statements of Organization and, in making contributions to several political committees, had exceeded their single $5,000 contribution ceiling. (See 2 U.S.C. §§433(b)(2) and 441a(a)(2)(A).)

Furthermore, his complaint claimed that the election law and FEC Regulations recognized automatic affiliation between business federations and their members, on the one hand, while only a discretionary affiliation between a labor federation and its members, on the other. The plaintiff had alleged that this was discriminatory treatment in violation of the First and Fifth Amendments.

Pursuant to 2 U.S.C. §437g(a)(8), Mr. Antosh filed his first suit against the FEC in the district court on May 17, 1984. The plaintiff asked the court to declare that the FEC's failure to act on his administrative complaint within 120 days was contrary to law and to issue an order directing the FEC to proceed with an investigation into the complaint within 30 days.

On July 10, 1984, the Commission dismissed Mr. Antosh's administrative complaint, finding no reason to believe that violations of the election law had occurred. On the same day, the Commission also filed a motion with the court to dismiss Mr. Antosh's suit as moot. On July 23, 1984, Mr. Antosh requested that the court deny the FEC's motion to dismiss his case and grant his motion to file a supplemental complaint. In his proposed supplemental complaint, Mr. Antosh requested the court to declare that the FEC's dismissal of his administrative complaint was contrary to law, and to certify his constitutional questions to the appeals court. The court found, however, that Mr. Antosh's July 23 request did not constitute a supplement to his original suit because, unlike the original request, the motion did not deal with delays in processing his administrative complaint, but rather it dealt with the merits of the FEC's decision to dismiss the complaint. The court therefore decided that, under procedural rules, Mr. Antosh had to file a separate suit with the court.

Second suit

On September 6, 1984, Mr. Antosh filed a second suit with the district court to challenge the Commission's dismissal of his complaint. On December 3, 1984, pursuant to 2 U.S.C. §437h(a), he asked the district court to certify two constitutional claims to the appeals court. Specifically, he alleged that several provisions of the Federal Election Campaign Act and FEC regulations provided preferential treatment to labor organization PACs over trade association PACs. Mr. Antosh claimed that these distinctions violated the First and Fifth Amendments. Furthermore, Mr. Antosh asked the court to declare that the FEC's dismissal of his administrative complaint was contrary to law and that both the FEC and former Commissioner Thomas E. Harris had violated his rights to due process in refusing to disqualify Commissioner Harris from the agency's consideration of his administrative complaint. [2] (Prior to his appointment to the Commission in 1975, Commissioner Harris had served as counsel for the AFL-CIO. Mr. Antosh claimed that Mr. Harris had signed a factual stipulation on behalf of the AFL-CIO in a 1973 case that was germane to Mr. Antosh's suit.)

The FEC filed an opposition to Mr. Antosh's motion for certification of his constitutional claims and filed an additional motion to dismiss them. The agency argued that Mr. Antosh lacked standing to raise the constitutional questions and that federal courts had already substantially settled the questions he raised.

In January 1988, the court granted the FEC's motions and dismissed Mr. Antosh's constitutional claims. The court found that, although the plaintiff had standing to raise his questions under the election law, he lacked standing under Article III of the Constitution. The court concluded that Mr. Antosh failed to demonstrate the kind of injury required by Article III, that is, "some actual or threatened injury which is traceable to illegal conduct by the defendant" and which "is likely to be redressed by a favorable ruling." The court first rejected Mr. Antosh's claim that, as a businessman who might contribute to trade association political action committees, his voice had been diminished in the political process by the law's alleged discrimination against such committees, thereby violating his rights under the free speech provision of the First Amendment. The court then rejected Mr. Antosh's claim that he had a personal stake in the law's alleged discrimination against corporate political action committees by virtue of his position as president of a corporation that was a member of trade associations, thereby violating his rights under the First Amendment and under the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment.

In March 1988 the district court ruled on the rest of the counts in Mr. Antosh's suit. With regard to Mr. Antosh's allegation that the FEC's dismissal of his administrative complaint was contrary to law, the court held that the FEC had "reasonably interpreted" the provision of the election law governing possible affiliation between the political committees named in the complaint. Consequently, the agency's dismissal of the complaint was not contrary to law.

The FEC had argued that the legislative history of Section 441a(a)(5) demonstrated that Congress had not intended to impose a single contribution limit on the AFL-CIO's PAC and the PACs of international unions affiliated with the AFL-CIO. The agency noted that it had consistently interpreted the provision this way.

The district court supported the FEC's view, noting comments made in 1976 by Congressman Wayne Hays, then Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee and a sponsor of the 1976 amendments to the Act, saying that the membership of international unions in the AFL-CIO did not mean that the unions and the federation were to be treated as a single entity for the purposes of the 1976 amendments.

With regard to Mr. Antosh's claim that Commissioner Harris should have recused himself from the case, the court concluded that "the intervention of significant numbers of years [nine] certainly is sufficient to remove any taint." The court added that it "refuse[d] to find that an attorney, at the very least nine years later, cannot consider cases involving a former client, especially after the Commission has made a determination that he or she is capable of impartially addressing the individual facts of a case."

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The full title of the AFL-CIO's PAC is "American Federation of Labor Congress of Industrial Organizations, Committee on Political Education Political Contributions Committee (AFL-CIO COPE-PCC)."

[2] Commissioner Harris's third term on the Commission expired in April 1985. He continued to serve on the Commission, however, until autumn 1986, when he was replaced on the Commission by Scott E. Thomas.

Source: FEC Record — June 1988; March 1988; and November 1984. Antosh v. FEC, 2 Fed. Elec. Camp. Fin. Guide (CCH) 9260 (D.D.C. Jan. 5, 1988), (D.D.C. Mar. 24, 1988) (unpublished opinion).