Thursday, March 20, 2008

Defense of Member Disclosure Law Based on Outdated Supreme Court Decision

Attorneys for the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) have filed a brief asserting that those who support the member disclosure law "have put too much emphasis on a half-century-old Supreme Court decision." NAM is challenging a provision of the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act (HLOGA), Section 207, which requires coalitions and associations to reveal members involved in their lobbying.

BNA Money and Politics ($$) reports that "defenders have based their arguments largely on a 1954 Supreme Court ruling, U.S. v. Harriss, which upheld the constitutionality of an earlier disclosure law, the Federal Regulation of Lobbying Act. But the brief filed March 17 on behalf of NAM said the Harriss decision was handed down 'before the current First Amendment standards were formulated,' which limit the government's ability to regulate free political expression."

The NAM brief also argued that Congress's goal in HLOGA was to provide greater transparency for "stealth coalitions"--shadowy groups that usually focus on a single issue and want to obscure who is providing the lobbying clout behind the effort. The agenda of traditional groups like the century-old NAM is already well known, the association indicated. Also, NAM said, the challenged HLOGA provision is a poorly drafted law, which cannot even guarantee it will expose what Congress wanted to shine a light on. The NAM brief suggested, for example, that stealth coalitions can avoid disclosure if they do not have their own lobbyists but instead use lobbyists hired by their members. Even when there is disclosure of members contributing to lobbying efforts, the lobbying issues of interest to these members may not be clear, the NAM brief said. Also, lobbying efforts funded by wealthy individuals, rather than companies, are exempted from the new disclosure requirements, NAM said.