ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, October 3, 1996 TAG: 9610030048
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JAN VERTEFEUILLE STAFF WRITER
STATE RESTRICTIONS on political literature should be weighed by state courts, a judge ruled. And the legislature already has amended them anyway.
Although he believes Virginia judges have improperly interpreted a state campaign disclosure law in the past, a federal judge this week ruled that he lacks jurisdiction over what should be a state matter.
U.S. District Judge Samuel Wilson dismissed a suit filed last year by conservative groups that had been prevented from distributing voter guides the Democratic Party of Virginia didn't like.
Because of changes to the law made by the General Assembly this spring, the issue may be moot anyway.
Three times since 1989, state judges have issued election-eve injunctions prohibiting distribution of voter guides by conservative groups such as the Virginia Society for Human Life. The Democratic Party of Virginia had sought the injunctions because the groups had not registered with the state and printed their names on the literature, as required by law.
Wilson said last fall that he believed the law as applied by state judges was unconstitutional prior restraint, a violation of the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of speech.
Last October, Wilson ruled that part of the law - requiring names of those responsible for campaign literature to be printed on it - could not survive "strict scrutiny" by the courts. He issued an injunction allowing people who wanted to distribute campaign literature before last year's elections to do so anonymously and without registering with the state as a ``political committee.''
But he said it wasn't necessarily the statute that was flawed, but the judges' interpretation of it. He ruled that it should be up to the Virginia courts to limit the way the law can be applied, not the federal courts.
Wilson asked the Virginia Supreme Court to review the statute before he ruled on the law's constitutionality. But this year the state's high court declined his request, leaving the case in Wilson's hands.
The General Assembly, however, amended the campaign finance disclosure laws in May, ``ostensibly to narrow their reach,'' Wilson noted in his opinion.
The laws as amended by the General Assembly have not been interpreted by a state judge yet. So a challenge to the laws as they existed when the state judges stopped distribution is moot, Wilson said, and a challenge to the new laws is premature because they haven't been applied yet.
The suit was filed on behalf of Roanoke County resident Vern Jordahl, a member of the political group Virginia Leadership Council, and Mary-Beth LaRock, a Loudoun County member of the conservative Christian Concerned Women for America.
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