Federal bill raises many free speech concerns

A Leftist wish-list: It will not get past either the Senate GOP or President Trump

The more that comes out about congressional Democrats’ gargantuan, 571-page “For the People Act of 2019,” the more reason there is to oppose it.

David French, an attorney who focuses on constitutional law, recently warned in National Review Online that the bill could be better named “the ‘Constitutional Lawyers Enrichment Act,’ because the passage of the law would trigger a full decade (at least) of litigation on numerous constitutional fronts.”

Bradley A. Smith, chairman of the Institute for Free Speech, warns the bill would “place sweeping new limitations on speech” and “does so in a very complex, vague, and unintuitive manner.”

French and Bradley both warn provisions touted as preventing coordination between candidates and independent political action committees have far greater reach. Bradley warns the PAC restrictions “apply to literally any civic or membership organization” that engages discussion of legislative issues and public affairs.

“For advocacy groups, unions, and trade associations, several of the limits proposed in H.R. 1 would operate as a total ban on speech,” Bradley writes.

He says many routine communications made today by advocacy groups would be illegal even though most “have nothing to do with election campaigns. Rather, groups will be silenced when trying to participate in public debate on important policy issues.”

That silencing would occur, Bradley writes, because the “promote, attack, support, oppose” (PASO) standard mandated in the Democratic bill is overly broad and “a green light for the government and even private litigants to impose huge legal costs on almost any group’s effort to communicate about politics and issues — except through the speech of candidates and parties themselves

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