Court rules Maine can't enforce law prohibiting foreign spending on campaigns

Yahoo

9 hours ago

Jul. 12—Maine cannot enforce a law voters approved two years ago that limits what foreign governments can spend on campaigning in state and local elections, following a federal appeals court decision Friday.
The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in its majority opinion, written by Judge Lara Montecalvo, that Maine's foreign campaign spending law violates the First Amendment. The decision to stop the state from pausing the law is technically temporary and won't be final until the rest of the legal case is decided by a federal judge. The court is siding with several Maine utilities and media groups who sued Maine to stop it from enforcing the law in late 2023.
The appeals court's opinion echoes findings from U.S. District Judge Nancy Torresen in February 2024, who ruled that some parts of the law were appropriate but others were too broad.
Montecalvo remarked that the law was both "overwhelmingly popular" with voters, with 86% casting their ballot in favor, but also controversial — playing out amid a lengthy legal battle over the construction of an energy transmission line that would run across Maine to connect Massachusetts to Canadian electricity.
Central Maine Power v. EEC by Maine Trust For Local News on Scribd
The energy project was unpopular with some voters, who have tried unsuccessfully to cancel the corridor in multiple elections, Montecalvo wrote. Various Maine utilities that benefit from the project — including Central Maine Power and Versant — have spent millions to oppose ballot initiatives targeting the effort.
While both companies operate in Maine, Montecalvo wrote, both also have some degree of foreign ownership. The transmission project also involves H.Q. Energy Services from Canada, which Montecalvo said spent $22 million over 10 years campaigning against anti-pipeline races.
An attorney for the state, Jonathan Bolton, told the appeals court in October that Maine has a strong interest in policing foreign influence on referendums.
"This is not a law that was dealing with an abstract or hypothetical problem," he told the court last fall. "This was a problem that had recently happened in Maine."
Montecalvo agreed Friday that Maine has a "compelling interest" in limiting foreign government influence in its elections, but not in trying to limit the appearance of foreign influence, which is broader and harder to enforce.
"We note that the amount of uncertainty as to which corporations are covered by the law will potentially have a chilling effect," the appeals court wrote. "The Act does not set any particular moment in time for determining the level of foreign ownership, which — for publicly traded corporations — can fluctuate throughout the course of a day. As a consequence, U.S. corporations with First Amendment protections will likely choose not to speak at all rather than risk criminal penalties."
Judge Seth Aframe wrote in a concurring opinion that Maine's foreign campaign spending law targets corporations and their right to speech.
"Maine seems to be concerned that foreign governments will influence the outcome of Maine elections by inducing American companies to spread foreign-sponsored messages to the electorate through an American speaker," Aframe wrote. "But the Maine law does not seek to silence only foreign speech; it also seeks to suppress the speech of American companies that might have been swayed by it. Such targeting of an American speaker's right to engage in core political speech is anathema to the First Amendment."
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