A federal judge ruled yesterday that an Ohio law limiting lobbying activities by former legislators violates the First Amendment. The ruling paves the way for Ohio legislators who leave office to immediately begin exercising their core political speech rights, rather than waiting 12 months to do so.
U.S. District Court Judge Susan Dlott ruled that the law (O.R.C. 102.03(A)(4)) severely burdened former legislator Thomas Brinkman Jr.’s right to speak out and lobby for various causes or organizations, as well as the ability of the co-plaintiff, Coalition Opposed to Additional Spending and Taxes (COAST), to use Mr. Brinkman as its advocate before the Ohio General Assembly. Judge Dlott wrote that the defendant State officials failed to “establish that the danger of quid pro quo corruption or the appearance of corruption is significantly lessened if the former legislator is permitted to lobby the General Assembly one year and one day after leaving the legislature.”
The Court struck down the Ohio law both facially and as-applied to Mr. Brinkman and COAST. In doing so, the Court highlighted many of the constitutional infirmities present in the statute.
For one, the Court held that the law was not narrow enough to survive the heightened judicial scrutiny that often applies in the First Amendment context. For example, the law prohibited lobbying on any matter, rather than simply restricting advocacy on matters about which the former legislator had personally participated when he was in office.
In addition, the Court deemed the law overinclusive, noting that it prohibited both volunteer lobbying (which Mr. Brinkman sought to do) and compensated lobbying, despite the fact that volunteer lobbying fails to implicate the type of corruption concerns that the State purportedly sought to address through the law. The Court took note of other states–such as Alabama and Hawaii–that employ more narrowly tailored “revolving door” statutes that restrict only compensated lobbying activities.
The Court concluded that the law was underinclusive too. That is, it failed to “restrict other behaviors or activities of former members of the General Assembly that might give rise to actual or perceived corruption, such as the acceptance of gifts or offers for employment unrelated to lobbying.”
A copy of the Order Granting Plaintiffs’ Motion for Summary Judgment and Issuance of a Permanent Injunction is available here.
UPDATE: COAST, one of the plaintiffs, has blogged about the case here.
DISCLAIMER: The author of this post served as Plaintiffs’ co-counsel in this case.
This post was written by Joshua Bolinger.
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