Buckley v. American Constitutional Law Foundation, Inc.

525 U.S. 182 (1999)

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Buckley v. American Constitutional Law Foundation, Inc.

United States Supreme Court
525 U.S. 182 (1999)

JC

Facts

Colorado allowed for citizen ballot initiatives but placed various limits on the conduct of those initiatives. A recent US Supreme Court case, Meyer v. Grant, had found that a requirement that ballot-petition-initiative circulators be unpaid violated the First and Fourteenth Amendment freedoms of those advocating for the initiatives. However, some remaining limitations on the initiative-circulation process were still alleged to violate the constitutional rights of those supporting the initiatives. American Constitutional Law Foundation, Inc., (ACLF) (defendant) filed a suit against Colorado Secretary of State Victoria Buckley (plaintiff) challenging six of Colorado’s requirements in the initiative-circulation process. The specific requirements at issue were: 1) that petition circulators be at least 18 years old; 2) that petition circulators be registered voters; 3) that the petition-circulation time period be limited to six months; 4) that circulators wear identification badges stating their names, and if they were paid, by whom; 5) that the circulators each include within each petition section an affidavit that the circulator had read and understood the law regarding such petitions; and 6) that sponsors who paid circulators file the name, address, and pay information of each paid circulator. The trial court struck down the badge requirement and some of the registration requirements but upheld the age requirement, the affidavit requirement, and the time-period limitation. The appellate court upheld the same three limitations but also struck down the requirement that circulators be registered voters, as well as found that parts of the badge-identification and registration measures were too broad. The matter was then appealed to the US Supreme Court, which granted certiorari. While prior law had made clear that actions bearing on First Amendment issues would be scrutinized, the government defended the requirements on the basis of the need to protect election integrity.

Rule of Law

Issue

Holding and Reasoning (Ginsburg, J.)

Concurrence/Dissent (O’Connor, Breyer, J.J.)

Dissent (Rehnquist, C.J.)

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