FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 5, 2006

Contact:
Barbara Lyons
Wisconsin Right to Life
877-855-5007
blyons@wrtl.org

 

James Bopp, Jr.
Bopp, Coleson & Bostrom
812-232-2434 (office)
812-243-0825 (cell)
jboppjr@aol.com

 

FEC Refuses WRTL Offer to Stay and Settle Case
 

On April 4, the FEC Commissioners voted to refuse the offer of Wisconsin Right to Life, Inc. ("WRTL") to stay and settle its lawsuit in WRTL v. FEC (WRTL's suit to establish a grassroots lobbying exception to the electioneering communication prohibition). WRTL had offered to stay proceedings and to settle the case if the FEC would issue a statement of policy and pursue a rulemaking to protect grassroots lobbying from the prohibition on "electioneering communications."

 

The grassroots lobbying exception that WRTL proposed follows the definition that a broad-spectrum coalition recently proposed as the subject of an expedited rulemaking. The coalition was comprised of the AFL-CIO, Alliance for Justice, Chamber of Commerce of the United States, National Education Association, and OMB Watch. The proposed rule may be found online at http://www.fec.gov/pdf/nprm/lobbying/notice_2006-4.pdf .

 

James Bopp, Jr., lead counsel for WRTL, comments: "The FEC continues its intransigence concerning a rule to protect grassroots lobbying, even though the Supreme Court recently reiterated the authority of the FEC to make a rule and Senators McCain and Feingold and the other prime sponsors of BCRA earlier proposed a grassroots lobbying rule to the FEC and said it was okay to adopt it. It is time for the FEC to get moving on this issue!"

 

The letter requesting the statement of policy and offering settlement may be read at www.jamesmadisoncenter.org under the section on Wisconsin Right to Life's McCain-Feingold Challenge.

 

James Bopp, Jr. has a national federal and state election law practice. He is General Counsel for the James Madison Center for Free Speech and former Co-Chairman of the Election Law Subcommittee of the Federalist Society.
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