The Albuquerque-based Rio Grande Foundation and Illinois Opportunity Project argue that a new state law requiring stricter financial disclosure requirements for political issue advertisements is unconstitutional.

Although such issue-based advertisements are by law prohibited from expressly advocating for or against a specific candidate, they nonetheless influence elections.

Paul Gessing, president of the Rio Grande Foundation, argues that such donors have a constitutional right to hide their identities.

“We believe very strongly that there is and should be a room and a place for donor privacy in this fractious, easily-offended world of ours when it comes to politics,” Gessing said.

The lawsuit cites as precedent a 1958 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that sided with the NAACP when Alabama sought to stop the civil rights group from conducting business in the state. Alabama also fought to disclose the identities of NAACP members — a move that Justice John Marshall Harlan II argued would have subjected members to “economic reprisal, loss of employment, threat of physical coercion, and other manifestations of public hostility.”

The backdrop of the landmark court ruling is a bloody, racist history of more than 4,000 lynchings of black Americans from 1835 through 1964 and a legacy of slavery.

“I’m not putting us directly in the category of NAACP circa-1958 Deep South,” Gessing said, but argued this “is a very fraught world we’re dealing with.”
Citing the 1958 precedent, the Rio Grande Foundation’s 2019 lawsuit argues that the First Amendment protects “the right to engage in anonymous issue advocacy” because “compelled disclosure of their donors could lead to substantial personal and economic repercussions for their supporters.”
The complaint continues, “Across the country, individual and corporate donors to political candidates and issue causes are being subject to boycotts, harassment, protests, career damage, and even death threats for publicly engaging in the public square.”
This year, the Legislature passed a measure signed into law by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham requiring groups paying for issue ads before an election to disclose their members and contributors and require a disclosure on the advertisement that note what group paid for it.
Alex Curtas, spokesman for the Secretary of State’s Office, said in a statement that Toulouse Oliver has spent her career working “to give the public a better understanding of who is trying to influence our elections by providing more transparency and accountability in campaign finance reporting.
“That’s exactly what Senate Bill 3 did and it’s disappointing that these groups are seeking to roll back the strong accountability measures New Mexico now has in place,” Curtas said, adding that “we are confident in its legality.”