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| Detail of the Elbert Tuttle Court of Appeals in Atlanta Georgia |
In the weeks following the passage of Georgia Voter Suppression bill SB202 a number of organizations expressed concern about how the bill would limit election turnout in Georgia, and create a powerful State Elections Chair who would be elected by the Republican dominated State legislature and granted the authority to harass and intimidate county elections by making arbitrary and capricious demands, and to throw out large numbers of votes based on nothing more than conservative propaganda and far-flung conspiracy theories. Although the bill claims the Elections Chair should be "non-partisan", the language between lines 193 and 265 of the bill appears to have been carefully crafted to grant Georgia Republicans the ability to appoint a right-wing extremist from any of the army of conservative 501c3 groups (like Citizens United, the Heritage Foundation, the Federalist Society or Freedomworks) around the country that falsely claim to be "non-partisan". The CEO of Delta Airlines declared that opposing the bill was a matter of "standing up for our people", and Major League Baseball decided to move the All Star Game to demonstrate their opposition to the law.
Republicans in the Georgia State House responded to Delta Airlines' statement by threatening to repeal tax breaks on jet fuel, and Senate Republicans Mike Lee and Ted Cruz have threatened to introduce legislation to eliminate the special anti-trust protections granted to Major League Baseball. While Republicans will try to make up excuses to justify their actions, it is clear that in the current context, their goal is to punish these companies for speaking out against GOP voter suppression efforts, and any prevarications that Republicans attempt to muster up should be disregarded as nonsense.
In Citizens United v. FEC., the Supreme Court ruled that "The Government may regulate corporate political speech through disclaimer and disclosure requirements, but it may not suppress that speech altogether."
There is no denying that in this context, the attempt to pass punitive legislation that will cause economic loss to Delta Airlines and Major League Baseball is in retaliation for statements and actions that were examples of political speech. That kind of retributive legislation is clearly an attempt to get companies to recant their statements and actions, and therefore qualifies as a form of suppression after the fact, and is therefore clearly illegal. When Republicans attempt to pass punitive legislation against other companies for speaking out against voter suppression bills, counsel for those companies should sue state legislatures that bring those laws for violation of their First Amendment Rights.Republicans cannot attempt action against either of these companies through filings with the Federal Election Commission either, as the companies are clearly opposing a particular political act, and not necessarily a political party. A Republican who came out in opposition to SB202 would likely be heralded by both Delta and Major League Baseball, and would receive their support. Additionally, Delta and Major League Baseball are both in support of existing Federal Law. The authorities granted to the State Elections Chair in SB202, if fully exercised, would likely violate Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (as encoded at 52 USC 10101), as well as 18 USC § 595: Interference by administrative employees of Federal, State, or Territorial Governments. Because the initial acts did not endorse a particular candidate or party, were more than sixty days away from an election, and represented opposition to a bill that includes creation of a State Elections Chair with overly broad authorities that could result in violation of existing voting laws, there's absolutely no grounds for bringing any kind of FEC complaint against either Delta or Major League Baseball.
The modern day GOP has no real governing agenda. Since the GOP adopted Trump, they have become a bunch of irate culture warriors who bounce from one crusade to the next like a crowd of bumbling lunatics. This constant bouncing from one culture war meme to the next means that opportunities will come up where legal precedents that GOP corporate sponsors fought very hard for, can be turned around and used against Republicans. If Democrats are extremely lucky, the less intelligent of the GOP culture warrior buffoons will end up verbally trashing the precedent the party fought so hard for, and create greater confusion and discord within the party. There is absolutely no reason that Civil Rights lawyers should think that they are obligated to "play nice" and avoid leveraging these opportunities. The precedent established in Citizens United v. FEC can be used to protect corporations from retributive legislation passed by Republican lawmakers who are trying to penalize those companies for speaking out against voter suppression.
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