California-case ruling orders donor unveiling
Americans for Prosperity, a conservative political action committee funded by billionaires David and Charles Koch, must disclose its biggest donors in confidential tax filings in California, a U.S. appeals court ruled.
The ruling by the San Francisco-based panel reverses a trial court order blocking California from collecting information that’s already required by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service. The ruling Tuesday opens the door to the state attorney general’s potential scrutiny of the brothers’ nonprofit organization’s major contributors.
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra’s office uses the information to prevent charitable fraud and it’s not to be made public “except in very limited circumstances,” the appeals court said.
U.S. District Judge Manuel Real in Los Angeles ruled after a 2016 trial that the donors’ constitutional rights to freedom of association and privacy outweighed the attorney general’s need for the information. The appeals court disagreed, concluding the data were “substantially related” to the state’s interest in policing charitable fraud.
Even assuming those few major donors “would face substantial harassment” if their contributions to the PAC became publicly known, the court called that risk of inadvertent public disclosure “slight.”
Also on the losing side was the Christian conservative Thomas More Law Center.
U.S. Circuit Judge Raymond Fisher, who was appointed to the court by President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, wrote the opinion. Joining in the ruling were another Clinton pick, Richard Paez, and Jacqueline Nguyen, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, also a Democrat.
The ruling marks the second time the court reversed Real on the donor disclosure issue. In 2015 it overturned his decision that submitting the information would chill contributors’ free-speech right.
The case is Americans for Prosperity Foundation v. Becerra, 16-55727, U.S. Court of Appeals, 9th Circuit in San Francisco. The lower court case is Americans for Prosperity Foundation v. Harris, 14-cv09448, U.S. District Court, Central District of California in Los Angeles.