New Amicus Briefs on Donor Privacy and Federalism

Donor Privacy

ALEC has submitted an amicus brief in Alaska Policy Forum v. Alaska Public Offices Commission (Supreme Court of the United States). This is a cert stage brief, petitioning the SCOTUS to take up the case.

Alaska Policy Forum (APF), a nonprofit public-policy organization, published materials (blogs/articles) criticizing ranked-choice voting before Alaska’s 2020 election, when voters were considering a ballot initiative that included ranked-choice voting. Alaska treated APF’s communications as regulated election advocacy and subjected the organization to registration, reporting, and donor-disclosure requirements; the Alaska Supreme Court ultimately upheld the state’s position. APF has petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court, challenging Alaska’s regulation of its issue speech and donor disclosures under the First Amendment.

ALEC’s amicus brief focuses particularly on Alaska’s two-tier disclosure regime, which can require an organization both to disclose donors through public filings and to identify its three largest donors directly on the communication itself, arguing that the system is insufficiently tailored, can misleadingly associate donors with speech they did not fund or support, and risks chilling protected speech and association.

Federalism

ALEC has signed onto Advancing American Freedom’s amicus brief in Ream v. U.S. Department of the Treasury (Supreme Court of the United States). This is also a cert stage brief, petitioning the SCOTUS to take up the case.

John Ream, an Ohio resident who wants to distill spirits at home for personal use, challenged the federal prohibition on home distilling, arguing that Congress lacks constitutional authority to prohibit this purely local, noncommercial activity. The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected his challenge, holding that the prohibition is a valid exercise of Congress’s Necessary and Proper Clause authority in support of its taxing power—a decision that conflicts with the Fifth Circuit’s recent conclusion that the federal home-distilling ban exceeds Congress’s constitutional authority, creating a circuit split among the federal Courts of Appeals.

Ream also presents a direct challenge to the expansive conception of federal power established under Wickard v. Filburn (1942), which held that Congress could regulate even wheat grown for personal consumption because, considered in the aggregate, such activity could substantially affect interstate commerce. Ream asks whether the federal home-distilling prohibition exceeds Congress’s enumerated powers and whether the Court should overrule or limit Gonzales v. Raich (more recent precedent built on the Wickard foundational doctrine) —and, more fundamentally, restore meaningful limits to the Commerce Clause.

The amicus brief argues that the Taxing, Commerce, and Necessary and Proper Clauses cannot be used to give Congress a general police power over purely local activity.