re: Harry Reid's Proposed Amendment

quote:

---

The American Civil Liberties Union strongly opposes S.J. Res. 19, a proposed constitutional amendment, sponsored by Sen. Tom Udall (D-NM), that would severely limit the First Amendment, lead directly to government censorship of political speech and result in a host of unintended consequences that would undermine the goals the amendment has been introduced to advance—namely encouraging vigorous political dissent and providing voice to the voiceless, which we, of course, support.

....

Recognizing both the severe harm to political debate through overbroad laws that suppress all
issue advocacy mentioning a candidate for office, and the difficulty in making principled
distinctions between issue and express advocacy under a totality of the circumstances approach,
the courts have rightly rejected measures that allow the government to restrict issue advocacy at all.

....

Rather than “equalizing” the debate and giving voice to the voiceless, laws that allow
criminalization of issue advocacy— which this, on its face, would permit—actually give the
advantage to special interests with significant resources, because they can now call on the law to regulate their policy opponents. By exempting this class of political speech from the scope of
the First Amendment (and potentially other rights), it would provide no protection at all for disfavored minority groups on both the left and right.

---