BREAKING: Court allows campaign finance challenges

[kpete]

Monday, January 23, 2006
Court allows campaign finance challenges
Posted by Lyle Denniston at 10:31 AM

The Supreme Court ruled on Monday, without dissent, that it has not barred all challenges to actual operation in practice of federal campaign finance restrictions. It ordered a lower court to reconsider an "as-applied" challenge by an anti-abortion group, Wisconsin Right to Life Inc. The unsigned opinion, only two and a half pages in length, was announced by Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. It ordered a three-judge District Court to consider the merits of the organization's complaint.

The decision came in a case argued just last Tuesday -- Wisconsin Right to Life v. Federal Election Commission (04-1581). The anti-abortion organization contends that the new federal campaign finance law's restrictions on political ads close to election-time is unconstitutional when it is applied to grass-roots lobbying efforts.

Granting review of no new cases, the Court denied review of an appeal by Research In Motion, Ltd., the Canadian maker of the BlackBerry hand-held e-mail device, challenging a finding that it violated patents held by a Virginia company. RIM is now faced either with settling the patent dispute, or coming out with an altered device that gets around the patented process, because a federal judge is considering a possible order to stop all sales and services of BlackBerry devices in the U.S. (The case is Research In Motion v. NTP Inc. (05-763).

The Court took no action on two major pending cases: the challenge to the war on terrorism detention of a U.S. citizen, Jose Padilla (Padilla v. Hanft, 05-533), and the federal government's appeal seeking to salvage the ban on so-called "partial birth" abortions (Ashcroft v. Carhart, 05-380).

more at:http://www.scotusblog.com/movabletype/archives/2006/01/court.html

[phoebe]

1. notice that they are not taking up the case re: judicial appointees

soliciting campaign donations as well as party affiliation issues despite 2 lower court requests to do so.