PORTLAND — The Maine Supreme Judicial Court on Thursday upheld a lower court’s ruling that the National Organization for Marriage and its allies cannot shield the names of donors to a 2009 campaign against same-sex marriage from the state’s election oversight commission.
In affirming an earlier Kennebec County Superior Court’s decision, justices on the Supreme Judicial Court rejected NOM’s arguments that subpoenas issued by the Maine Commission on Governmental Ethics and Elections Practices violate donors’ First Amendment rights and expose them to “threats, harassment and reprisal.”
The court heard arguments in the case April 11.
“Our review of the extensive record, the Superior Court’s well-reasoned opinion, and the detailed analysis of related issues by our federal court colleagues leads us to conclude that, on the facts of this case, the Commission did not err,” the ruling issued Thursday states.
Based in Virginia, NOM is a major, national opponent of gay marriage legislation. It raised about $1.9 million, the vast majority of the $2.5 million spent in the 2009 campaign that repealed gay marriage in Maine. The Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland contributed more than $500,000 to that campaign, according to previously published reports.
NOM did not register as a political action committee, as the state’s campaign finance laws required, according to the Maine Commission on Governmental Ethics and Election Practices. If NOM solicited funds from donors specifically for the Maine repeal effort, it would have to turn over to the commission the names, address and other information about those contributors.
Stand for Marriage Maine and Brian Brown also are listed as appellants in the decision issued Thursday.
The commission asked for the names of NOM’s campaign donors “to evaluate the oral communications NOM made in soliciting donations during the 2009 election season, a critical issue in determining NOM’s compliance with Maine’s campaign laws,” the ruling states.
Federal courts also have ruled against NOM’s legal arguments against releasing the names of campaign donors. The Maine Supreme Judicial Court cited those rulings in Thursday’s decision.
In 2010, U.S. District Judge D. Brock Hornby upheld the state’s disclosure laws as they relate to ballot committees. Early last year, the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with Hornby’s ruling. In August 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up NOM’s appeal.
In a November 2012 statewide referendum, Maine voters legalized same-sex marriage. NOM complied with the state’s campaign finance laws in the 2012 election, according to previously published reports.
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