No On E v. David Chiu

“The district court applied exacting scrutiny, which requires a ‘substantial relation’ between the disclosure requirement and a ‘sufficiently important’ governmental interest.” Citizens United v. FEC, 558 U.S. 310, 366–67 (2010).

California law requires political committees to include a disclaimer in their political advertisements identifying their top contributors. In November 2019, San Francisco passed Proposition F, which required that if any of the top contributors are themselves political committees, then the advertisement must also include a disclaimer disclosing that committee’s top three contributors. Petitioner filed suit claiming that San Francisco’s secondary-contributor requirement violates the First Amendment and moved for a preliminary injunction, which was denied by the district court because Petitioner was unlikely to succeed on the merits. Petitioner then filed an interlocutory appeal. “The district court applied exacting scrutiny, which requires a ‘substantial relation’ between the disclosure requirement and a ‘sufficiently important’ governmental interest.” Citizens United v. FEC, 558 U.S. 310, 366–67 (2010) (internal quotes omitted). The Court held the district court did not abuse its discretion in denying Plaintiff's motion because the public’s interest in knowing the source of funding for political advertisements is substantially related to the governmental interest in informing the electorate. The Court reasoned that any injury to Plaintiff's First Amendment protections would be modest, outweighed by the compelling government interest in “informing voters of the source of funding for election-related communications,” and that the secondary-contributor requirement was narrowly tailored to sufficiently prevent an excessive burden of Plaintiff’s rights. AFFIRMED.