State Law on Candidates’ Mailers Ruled Illegal

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 U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1995 that an Ohio law requiring all campaign literature to contain the name and address of the person responsible violated freedom of speech.

That 7-2 ruling, in the case of an anti-tax activist campaigning against a local school tax, cited an American tradition of anonymous pamphleteering dating back to John Adams, James Madison and Thomas Paine. The ruling went on to say that the right of anonymous political speech outweighed the state’s need to identify the source to the public.

The California law had been upheld in 1994 by the state Supreme Court, which balanced the scales differently and found the law justified by “the state’s interest in a well-informed electorate.”

The loser in that case, Daniel Griset, a former Santa Ana City Council member, appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which denied review of his case five days after its 1995 ruling in the Ohio case.

The state Fair Political Practices Commission fined Griset and two of his campaign committees $10,000 for five anonymous mass mailings in Griset’s 1988 reelection campaign. The fines have never been collected.

In Friday’s 2-1 ruling, the court said Griset can renew his challenge to the California law because the FPPC never obtained a final judgment against him. Based on the high court’s Ohio ruling, “we are forced to conclude” that the state law is unconstitutional, stated the opinion by Presiding Justice David Sills.

Justice Edward Wallin joined his opinion. Justice Sheila Sonenshine dissented, saying Griset’s case was over long ago and cannot be revived on the technical grounds cited by Sills. She would not say whether she thought the state law was invalid.