Appeals Court Strikes Campaign Mailer Law
California’s law requiring candidates to identify themselves in mailings to voters is unconstitutional, a state appeals court ruled Friday.
With apparent reluctance, the 4th District Court of Appeal said the law violates the historic right to speak and write anonymously.
The California law had been upheld in 1994 by the state Supreme Court, which found that it was justified by “the state’s interest in a well-informed electorate.”
In Friday’s 2-1 ruling, the appeals court cited a 1995 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that an Ohio law requiring all campaign literature to contain the name and address of the person responsible violated freedom of speech.
The loser in the California case, Daniel Griset, a former Santa Ana City Council member, had appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which denied review of his case five days after its ruling in the Ohio case.
The state Fair Political Practices Commission fined Griset and two of his campaign committees $10,000 for anonymous mass mailings in Griset’s 1988 campaign. The fines have never been collected. The appeals court ruled Friday that Griset can renew his challenge to the California law because the FPPC never obtained a final judgment against him.
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