Montana Corporations Ask Court To Put Its Decision Upholding a Ban on Corporate Independent Expenditures On Hold While U.S. Supreme Court Decides Their CaseJames Madison Center for Free Speech PRESS RELEASE Montana Corporations Ask Court To Put Its Decision Upholding a Ban on Corporate Independent Expenditures On Hold While U.S. Supreme Court Decides Their Case Yesterday, the political advocacy group American Tradition Partnership, along with two other corporate plaintiffs, Champion Painting and the Montana Sports Shooting Association, have asked the Montana Supreme Court to not enforce its decision to uphold Montana’s law that bans corporations from independently spending money to support or oppose candidates for public office. The plaintiffs argue that the Court’s decision should be put on hold while the United States Supreme Court determines whether the Court’s decision is correct. In December of 2011, the Montana Supreme Court found that Montana’s ban on corporate independent expenditures did not violate the First Amendment as an impermissible prohibition on speech. The Court reversed the trial court which had recognized that the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, in which the Supreme Court struck down a similar federal corporate-speech ban, meant that Montana’s ban was unconstitutional. The Montana Supreme Court said that Citizens United did not control and that the state’s corporate-speech ban was justified by a number of alleged governmental interests, including an interest in preventing political corruption, which Citizens United had rejected. The plaintiffs filed their lawsuit challenging Montana’s corporate-speech ban in March of The Bopp Law Firm has been retained to seek review of the Montana Supreme Court’s The case is Western Tradition Partnership et al., v. Attorney General et al., DA 11-0081. The |