Legal question about Citizens United, money and speech.

[DetlefK]

Correct me, if I'm wrong. Campaign-donations are an expression of political will. Therefore they are speech. According to the 1st amendment there shouldn't be limits on speech. So there shouldn't be a limit on campaign-donations.


Now, my made-up scenario:
You are running in an election. Your opponent is running ads that are factually incorrect. Those ads are paid for with the donations he received. That means, the speech of the donors is part of the factually incorrect ads, because those ads wouldn't exist without the speech/money of the donors.

Does that mean, you can sue your opponent's donors for libel?

[Nye Bevan]

1. For starters, Citizens United did not address "campaign donations".

It addressed independent expenditures during campaigns. Corporate campaign donations to candidates in Federal elections are still illegal.

And yes, you can sue for libel if you believe you are being libelled. For example, Hillary could have sued Citizens United over their "Hillary: the movie" if she believed it contained malicious falsehoods (this was the movie that the FEC banned and sparked the Citizens United case).

If you or I donate to a candidate, however, and that candidate uses the money to falsely and maliciously smear someone, I doubt that you or I could be sued for libel.

[DetlefK]

2. No, I meant the libel-suit as a front to expose who donated how much to the opponent.

[Lee-Lee]

3. I don't think so

Because that organization is who you sue because they committed the act against you.

Your claim of harm must be against the persons who actually committed the act.

Unless you can show that the donors specifically directed they engage in the specific act that you claim harmed you, you do not have a case against the donors.

Imagine if you gave donations to a charity that ran a summer camp, and it turns out at that camp children were being molested and nobody did anything. The lawsuits and criminal charges would all be against the people who did the molestation and who ran the camp, not against the donors.

Or heck, imagine if every person who gave money to the Catholic Church was sued because of the problems with priests molesting alter boys.

Or if you donated to a progressive organization with a website that had news articles, and one bad author put lies in an article. Should every donor be sued?

I like where your heart is, but that just seems way to problematic for many reasons.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

4. Imagine every political campaign descending into nothign but a series of suits and counter suits

[JayhawkSD]

5. Proving it false is insufficient.

You also have to prove thatthe perpetrator knew it to be false and that it harmed you in a manner that can be repaired by the recource that you are seeking. Suing because you lost the election, for instance, would not fly because no judgement could repair that. Punitive damages sounds nice, but there cannot be punitive damages unless there is some actual damage first.

As to suing donors, I suspect that you would have to prove that the donors provided the money with previous knowledge of the falsehood, that they had malicious intent in doing so, and that the donation was for the specific purpose of perpetrating the falsehood.

Finally, you would have to overcome the "puffery" concept, in which advocy is allowed to embellish facts in ways that the customer either can observe to be false of can/should examine for himself. In selling a car, for instance, a seller can say that "it runs great" and not be sued when it runs like crap because the seller was engaging in "puffery" and the buyer was capable of observing for himself whether or not the car did, indeed, run great.

Same would apply in a political race. If ads are perpetrating falshoods about a candidate there is some responsibility on the part of the voters to decide for themselves whether or not those statements are false. Some facts might be very difficult to check, but others might be sufficiently transparent that a lie regarding them would be considered "puffery," and much would be in a gray area.

[edhopper]

6. The bar for defamation when it comes to public officials is very high

most courts would not accept a suit coming from the area of political campaign.


And the problem with Citizens United is it says money is speech and that Corporations have the same rights as people, the Constitution doesn't say that.

[Nye Bevan]

7. Actually, Citizens United says that corporations, unions and nonprofits have First Amendment rights,

just as people do.

For example, if a Republican congress passed a law saying that entities such as Planned Parenthood were not permitted to take out advertising, this law would be struck down by the courts on the basis of the Citizens United decision.

The ACLU wholeheartedly supports the Citizens United decision, and even filed an amicus brief with the SCOTUS in the case.

[edhopper]

8. It was still a horrible decision

that will complete the total corruption of our government.