This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, June 18th, 2010. I'm Caleb Brown.

A mixed decision in the federal free speech case of SpeechNow.org, a group of individuals who just want to spend money to speak freely.

It's a major application of what the Supreme Court laid down in Citizens United.

Steve Simpson is a senior attorney at the Institute for Justice representing speech now.

He provides an update on the case and offers his thoughts on the Citizens United

and run, now moving through Congress, the Disclose Act.

Well in Speech Now we won a mixed decision in the DC circuit in March and basically what the

court held was that our clients who are and a group of citizens

who want to speak out about candidates during elections could raise money outside of contribution

limits.

That is their funding wouldn't be limited, but they'd still be required to form a particular type of regulated entity called a political committee.

So we lost on that. We challenge that as an onerous burden on

their speech but we won on the fundraising side so we are we have a split decision and

right now our clients are deciding whether or not to file an appeal to the United States Supreme Court,

arguing that requiring them to speak through a regulated entity called a

PAC or a political committee is an enormous burden on their speech and should be

struck down. Now just to be clear this is the same type of burden that the US

Supreme Court found in Citizens United was too burdensome for corporations like General Motors.

Precisely the same and one of the arguments that we have made to people and indeed we made this argument to the DC Circuit as well but it rejected it is that if

requiring general electric or general motorists to speak through a pack or political

committee is too burdensome then surely it is too burdensome for David Keating and five of his

friends to pool their funds and be required to speak through a pack as well. So we

...