Davis v. FEC
On August 9, 2007, a three-judge panel of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia granted the FEC’s motion for summary judgment in this case, and denied the plaintiff’s motion for summary judgment. Jack Davis, a candidate for the House of Representatives in New York’s 26th District, had asked the court to declare certain provisions of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA) known as the “Millionaires’ Amendment” unconstitutional on their face, and to issue an injunction barring the FEC from enforcing those provisions. Mr. Davis argued that the Millionaires’ Amendment violates the First Amendment by chilling speech by self-financed candidates, and violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fifth Amendment by giving a competitive advantage to self-financed candidates’ opponents. The court concluded that the Millionaires’ Amendment posed no threat to self-financed candidates’ First Amendment or Equal Protection rights.
Background
Under the Millionaires’ Amendment, candidates who spend more than certain threshold amounts of their own personal funds on their campaigns may render their opponents eligible to receive contributions from individuals at an increased limit. 2 U.S.C. §441a-1. For House candidates, the threshold amount is $350,000. This level of personal campaign spending could trigger increased limits for the self-financed candidate’s opponent depending upon the opponent’s own campaign expenditures from personal funds and the amount of funds the candidate has raised from other sources. If increased limits are triggered, then the eligible candidate may receive contributions from individuals at three times the usual limit of $2,300 per election and may benefit from party coordinated expenditures in excess of the usual limit
Complaint
On March 30, 2006, Mr. Davis announced his candidacy for the House seat in New York’s 26th District. Mr. Davis filed a Statement of Candidacy with the FEC declaring his intent to spend over $350,000 of his own funds on his campaign. On June 6, 2006, he filed a facial challenge to the provisions of the Millionaires’ Amendment that apply to House candidates, and both the plaintiff and the defendant moved for summary judgment.
Court Decision
Mr. Davis’s facial challenge to the Millionaires’ Amendment had two prongs: he argued that it infringes upon his First Amendment right to free speech and his Fifth Amendment right to equal protection. The court found that Mr. Davis’s First Amendment challenge failed at the outset because the Millionaires’ Amendment does not “‘burden [] the exercise of political speech.’” According to the court, the Millionaires’ Amendment “places no restrictions on a candidate’s ability to spend unlimited amounts of his personal wealth to communicate his message to voters, nor does it reduce the amount of money he is able to raise from contributors. Rather, the Millionaires’ Amendment accomplishes its sponsors’ aim to preserve core First Amendment values by protecting the candidate’s ability to enhance his participation in the political marketplace.” In particular, the court cited the fact that Mr. Davis himself has twice chosen to self-finance his campaign. The court found that Mr. Davis failed to show how his speech had been limited by the benefits his opponents receive under the statute. According to the court, “Davis himself has shown, whether a candidate incurs the burdens and benefits of the Amendment is entirely his option, and a statute whose application turns on such a choice does not impose an unconstitutional burden on First Amendment rights.”
Mr. Davis additionally alleged that the disclosure requirements for self-financed candidates under the Millionaires’ Amendment imposed an unfair burden on his right to speak in support of his own candidacy. The court found that the Millionaires’ Amendment reporting requirements are no more burdensome than other BCRA reporting requirements that the Supreme Court has already upheld.
The court also rejected the second prong of Mr. Davis’s facial challenge, regarding the Equal Protection provision of the Fifth Amendment. In order to argue that a statute violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fifth Amendment, a plaintiff must show that the statute treats similarly situated entities differently.¹ The court found that Mr. Davis could not make this showing because self-funded candidates, who can choose to use unlimited amounts of their personal funds for their campaigns, and candidates who raise their funds from limited contributions are not similarly situated. According to the court, “the reasonable premise of the Millionaires’ Amendment is that self-financed candidates are situated differently from those who lack the resources to fund their own campaigns and that this difference creates adverse consequences dangerous to the perception of electoral fairness.” Thus, the court found no violation of the Fifth Amendment.
The court granted the FEC’s request for summary judgment in this case and denied Mr. Davis’s request for summary judgment.
U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, 06-01185 (TG)(GK)(HK).
¹ See Cal. Med. Ass’n v. FEC, 453 U.S. 182, 200 (1981) (plurality opinion).