FEC v. International Funding Institute

On July 10, 1992, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, sitting en banc, upheld the constitutionality of 2 U.S.C. §438(a)(4). (Civil Action No. 91-5013.) That provision of the Federal Election Campaign Act (the Act) prohibits anyone from using, for solicitation or commercial purposes, the information on individual contributors listed in political committee reports filed with the FEC. On November 30, 1992, the U.S. Supreme Court denied a petition for review of the case.

On March 1, 1993, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ordered defendants to pay an $18,000 civil penalty for knowing and willful violations of the sale or use restriction.

Background

According to the findings of fact in this case, International Funding Institute (IFI), through Robert E. Dolan, its sole stockholder and director, subscribed to an on-line data base service provided by Legi-Tech, Inc. (an amicus curiae in this action). The data base contained information on individual contributors compiled from FEC reports. IFI developed the contributor data into a mailing list, which it marketed through a broker. The broker, in turn, rented the list to about five customers, including American Citizens for Political Action, Inc. (ACPA), a political committee. (Mr. Dolan is also chairman and treasurer of ACPA.) ACPA used the list for several mailings, each soliciting about 5,000 individuals.

In an internal enforcement matter, the FEC found probable cause to believe that IFI, ACPA and Mr. Dolan, as ACPA treasurer, knowingly and willfully violated section 438(a)(4). Unable to reach a conciliation agreement with respondents, the agency filed suit against them in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. (Civil Action No. 90-1623.)

Defendants asked the district court to dismiss the case, arguing that §438(a)(4) violated the First Amendment of the Constitution, both on its face and as applied to their conduct. The FEC moved to certify the constitutional question to the court of appeals. The district court granted the FEC's motion.

Court of Appeals opinion

Level of scrutiny

The court first examined what level of scrutiny it should apply to determine whether the use restriction of §438(a)(4) was constitutional. Noting some apparent conflicts in levels of scrutiny applied by the Supreme Court in similar cases, the court "assumed"-but did not decide-that §438(a)(4) was subject to intermediate scrutiny.

Quoting Seattle Times Co. v. Rhinehart, 467 U.S. 20, 32 (1984), the court explained the Supreme Court's criteria for intermediate scrutiny: it "require[s] only that the restriction further 'an important or substantial governmental interest unrelated to the suppression of expression' and [that it] be 'no greater than is necessary or essential to the protection of the particular governmental interest involved.'"

Governmental interest

The FEC argued, inter alia, that §438(a)(4) was narrowly tailored to further an important governmental interest, that of protecting the value of a political committee's contributor list. The FEC further argued that this protection, in turn, preserves political discourse.

The court agreed: "Without the use restriction of §438(a)(4), innumerable entrepreneurs would, like the defendants here, be able freely to appropriate to themselves part of the value of the contributor lists compiled by reporting political committees. As a result, such committees would have less incentive to compile the lists in the first place. In other words, if the return on their investment in solicitation would be reduced by others using the resulting lists, political committees would not find it worthwhile to solicit as much as they now do; they would raise less money, spend less money, and correspondingly underwrite less political discourse....[T]he use restriction protects political discourse from the adverse effect that the disclosure requirement of the Act would otherwise have."

(The FEC also argued, based on legislative history, that §438(a)(4) furthers the governmental interest in protecting contributors from unwanted solicitations, but the court did not find it necessary to reach that argument.)

Defendants claimed that a political committee has no property rights in its contributor list because a list of names and addresses is not sufficiently original to warrant copyright protection. The court, however, observed that "Congress may recognize an intellectual property interest, narrower than copyright, that is not subject to the constitutional requirement of originality."

The court rejected defendants' alternative argument that §438(a)(4) is inconsistent with the First Amendment because it creates "a property interest in the political sympathies of another." Instead, the court said, the use provision "narrowly protects the value of the list itself in a particular use; it does not prevent one from soliciting a person who is on a committee's contributor list, so long as one does not obtain that person's name (directly or indirectly) from a list filed with the FEC."

Conclusion

The court held that, under an intermediate level of scrutiny, section 438(a)(4) is constitutional as applied to the defendants' conduct because it "advances an important governmental interest" (preserving the value of a political committee's contributor list) and "is no broader than is necessary to that task."

The court rejected defendants' second claim, that §438(a)(4) was unconstitutional on its face. Quoting Members of the City Council of Los Angeles v. Taxpayers for Vincent, 466 U.S. 789, 798 (1984), the court said that a facial challenge can succeed "only if the statute may 'never be applied in a valid manner' or is 'written so broadly that [it] may inhibit the constitutionally protected speech of third parties.'" The defendants, the court said, failed to make such an argument.

The court remanded the case to the district court for proceedings consistent with its holding.

Defendants agreed to the district court's March 1993 order, which imposed the $18,000 penalty and also permanently enjoined defendants from future violations of the sale and use restriction.

Source:   FEC Record — May 1993; January 1993; September 1992