Attorneys disagree on effect of campaign finance ruling

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- A candidate who successfully challenged the repeal of contribution limits said Friday that politicians should have to return excess donations, while a Republican Senate leader said the opposite.

The Missouri Supreme Court had asked interested parties to offer written arguments by Friday on whether its July ruling restoring campaign contribution limits should apply going forward only or date back to January, when the challenged law removing limits took effect.

Attorney Chuck Hatfield, representing plaintiff and legislative candidate James Trout, argued that once a court finds a law unconstitutional, it has always been so.

"Because an unconstitutional law is no law, to hold that it has an effect is for the judicial branch to step into the shoes of the legislature and enact a law where none exists," he argued in his legal brief.

Republican Gov. Matt Blunt and others in the party have regularly criticized the courts, in particular taking issue with "activist judges," whom they see as going beyond interpreting laws to imposing new ones.

The Republican Party has argued the court should allow candidates to keep what they raised and apply limits only going forward.

The legal principle that an unconstitutional law was never in effect makes an exception, several attorneys said, when it causes harm to people who reasonably relied on the no longer valid law.

But Hatfield said there should be no exceptions in this case because he filed the lawsuit challenging it a day after the measure took effect, so candidates should have known they were taking a risk by accepting large donations.

The attorney general's office, representing the state and Ethics Commission, also said the law should apply retroactively, putting in jeopardy millions of dollars in campaign contributions in excess of state limits. But the attorney general proposed an exception for those whose election has already occurred or who closed their campaign committee before the court's ruling.

The state Republican Party, along with Senate majority leader Charlie Shields, R-St. Joseph, and a political committee, argue that candidates appropriately relied on the law in place at the time and should not be punished just because political opponents may not have used the same opportunity for unlimited fundraising.

"Plain and simple, the 'benefit' the attorney general seeks is the right to limit candidates' political speech," said Shields' brief, filed by attorney Edward "Chip" Robertson Jr., a former state Supreme Court judge.

He also argued that the exception for "reasonable reliance" is targeted at those who raised money under the law, and the harm to potential future candidates cannot be considered. He also argued that requiring candidates to return money already raised could infringe on First Amendment rights.

However, Trout's filing said candidates can't have it both ways.

The campaign finance legislation that took effect this year repealed individual contribution limits but also barred fundraising by politicians during the legislative session.

A Cole County judge in January temporarily blocked the ban on raising money during the session but allowed the repeal of limits to stand.

Candidates who raised money above the limits from January until mid-May were following and relying on the lawsuit and the judge's order, not the underlying legislation, Hatfield argued.