Court: Regulation Of Free Speech Stops Here!

A federal court has ruled unconstitutional an attempt by New Mexico politicians to regulate the political free speech of activists working to hold their elected officials accountable to the people.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth District in Denver, Colo., ruled that New Mexico Youth Organized could not be classified as a political organization subject to government regulation simply because it advocates political issues and educates the public on how lawmakers vote on those issues.

"The Tenth Circuit's holding is significant," explains a statement from The James Madison Center for Free Speech, which filed an amicus brief in the case, "because it limits government's ability to regulate organizations as full-fledged political committees, thereby imposing on them all the burdens – including registration, extensive recordkeeping requirements and extensive reporting requirements – that go along with being apolitical committee.

"As the Supreme Court has explained, these burdens are so onerous that many organizations, rather than complying with them, will just forego their political speech," the Center explains. "This is at odds with the Supreme Court's repeated holdings that political speech is at the very core of what the First Amendment protects."


New Mexico Youth Organized is a project of the Center for Civic Policy, the executive director of which, Eli Yong Lee, explains, "NMYO educates the public about how their governmental representatives vote and how these representatives are funded. NMYO encourages its constituents to communicate with their representatives regarding issues important to New Mexico youth."

Significantly, Lee insists, NMYO "do[es] not engage in express advocacy for the election or defeat of candidates for public office."

But when the NMYO mailed advertisements criticizing several incumbent state legislators, denouncing certain proposed initiatives and pointing out where sponsoring legislators received their funding, one of those criticized filed a complaint.

Democrat State Senator Shannon Robinson, of whom it was said in an NMYO advertisement on health care initiatives "voted with the insurance industry," asked New Mexico Secretary of State Mary Herrera to step in and force NMYO to conform to the state's regulations forpolitical committees.

A second targeted legislator, Democrat State Senator Bernadette Sanchez, also contacted State Attorney General Gary King, seeking the same clamps be put down on NMYO's activities.

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