(WASHINGTON, D.C.)—The Liberty Justice Center has petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to hear Rio Grande Foundation v. Oliver, a case challenging New Mexico’s campaign-disclosure law, which requires organizations that spend money to explicitly or implicitly support or oppose candidates for office or ballot initiatives to disclose certain donors.
Filed in December 2019, the Liberty Justice Center represents the Rio Grande Foundation in its constitutional challenge to New Mexico’s law, which requires disclosure of certain donors to nonpartisan, nonprofit organizations like the Rio Grande Foundation, which simply mention a candidate for office before an election, even though they do not, and legally cannot, spend money to support or oppose candidates for office. By sweeping issue advocacy into a public donor-reporting regime, the law chills speech and civic participation at the very moment public debate matters most.
The petition asks the Court to protect First Amendment rights of free speech and association by clarifying that campaign finance donor-disclosure laws must serve a specific informational interest and are not unlimited tools for the government to obtain donor information from any organization that happens to mention a candidate for office.
“Americans must be allowed to support causes they believe in without fear of harassment, retaliation, or public exposure,” said Jeffrey M. Schwab, Senior Counsel and Director of Litigation at the Liberty Justice Center. “The government does not have an informational interest in knowing donors to every organization that happens to mention a candidate for office when that speech is not about supporting or opposing the election of that candidate.”
Despite longstanding constitutional protections for associational privacy, New Mexico’s donor-disclosure rules require nonprofit organizations engaged in issue advocacy to reveal the identities of their supporters, even where there is no risk of quid pro quo corruption.
On March 29, 2024, the U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico ruled in favor of the law, upholding the donor disclosure requirement. Over a year later, the Tenth Circuit affirmed the district court’s decision, and denied Rio Grande Foundation’s petition to rehear the case en banc. The Liberty Justice Center is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review this case and restore the constitutional safeguards that allow citizens to support causes across the ideological spectrum without being placed on a public registry.
The Liberty Justice Center stands for the First Amendment rights of Americans to speak freely and associate privately. By forcing disclosure of donors who support issue-focused advocacy, New Mexico’s law violates these constitutional protections and deters individuals from participating in the democratic process.
Rio Grande Foundation v. Oliver was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico on December 13, 2019. All case filings can be found here.