The Supreme Court, on a 6-3 vote on Thursday, canceled out a state law in California that demanded charities provide personal information about their …
The Supreme Court, on a 6-3 vote on Thursday, canceled out a state law in California that demanded charities provide personal information about their major donors, a move that was considered likely to allow harassment or intimidation of those donors. «California’s blanket demand that all charities disclose [donor details] to the attorney general is facially unconstitutional,» the majority opinion, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, said. Those justices perceived as conservative on the bench joined him in the opinion, or in concurrences, while the three liberal justices disagreed. The case was based on challenges to the state law by Americans for Prosperity Foundation and the Thomas More Law Center. «Every American should be free to support causes they believe in without fear of harassment or intimidation,» said John Bursch, a senior counsel for the Alliance for Freedom, who had argued on behalf of the nonprofit organizations. In his brief, Bursch challenged a ruling by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, the most often overturned federal appeals court in the country, that sided with the state. The 9th Circuit reversed a district court’s decision following a trial, which found that the California attorney general’s office has no compelling need for the information. «In addition,» wrote Bursch, «the office publicly exposed confidential donor information on the internet and created a perfect target for hackers by uploading thousands of confidential documents to the cloud, where they were easily discovered.» The attorney argued that California «leaks confidential records like a sieve.» «That makes mandatory disclosure of sensitive information especially dangerous for donors and employees of nonprofits like Thomas More Law Center, who have faced intimidation, death threats, hate mail, boycotts, and even an assassination attempt from people who don’t agree with them,» he said. The decision noted that «A dramatic mismatch exists between the interest the attorney general seeks to promote and the disclosure regime that he has implemented.» The AG at the time the dispute developed was Xavier Becerra, the radically pro-abortion politician who now is Joe Biden’s secretary of Health and Human Services. «The enormous amount of sensitive information collected… does not form an integral part of California’s fraud detection efforts,» the opinion syllabus said.
