December 31, 2011

One to watch

From SCOTUSblog....

The Montana Supreme Court on Friday put to work its own view of what the Supreme Court had decided in the controversial ruling allowing massive corporate spending in political campaigns, and came out differently: the state court upheld a 99-year-old state ban on the use of corporations’ own money to support or oppose any candidate in state elections. The 5-2 ruling, including two dissenting opinions, is here. One of the dissenters predicted that the ruling would not survive an inevitable appeal to the Justices, and might be overturned without even a close look.

Eugene Voloch has this to add...

[W]hat has happened here is essentially this: The Supreme Court in Citizens United ... rejected several asserted governmental interests; and this Court has now come along, retrieved those interests from the garbage can, dusted them off, slapped a “Made in Montana” sticker on them, and held them up as grounds for sustaining a patently unconstitutional state statute....

Extremely positive development, but once Scalia et al get a hold of it likely it won't go anywhere, but it is damn interesting to see it reach even this far.

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