The Militant (logo)  

Vol. 76/No. 7      February 20, 2012

 
Maine disclosure law
undermines workers rights
 
BY JOHN STUDER  
On Jan. 31 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit upheld a Maine law that may force an organization, in this case a conservative group that opposes same-sex marriage rights, to disclose the names of its financial contributors. This would open them to harassment and victimization for their views and associations and strike a blow to the political rights of working people.

The organization, National Organization for Marriage, has raised money to challenge gay marriage laws in referendums in a number of states, including California, Washington and Maine. In each case some gay rights supporters and proponents of so-called transparency election laws have fought to force the group to make public the names of its contributors.

KnowThyNeighbor.org has posted the names of hundreds of thousands of signers of such petitions in Massachusetts, Florida and Arkansas. “Uncomfortable but desperately needed conversations continue to take place every day as a result,” the group boasted.

The National Organization for Marriage contributed $1.8 million to campaign for overturning Maine’s gay marriage law by referendum. After the vote, which did repeal the state’s gay marriage law, Fred Karger of Californians Against Hate filed a complaint with the Maine Ethics Commission arguing the group had not registered and disclosed contributors’ names, and urged the commission to force them to do so.

The commission launched an “investigation.” National Organization for Marriage filed suit in federal court, arguing that government action forcing to make its contributors public would be an unconstitutional violation of its right to privacy and free speech.

The fight against disclosure has a long history. In Alabama and other southern states, officials seeking to buttress Jim Crow segregation used “transparency” arguments in the 1950s to publicize the names of supporters of the NAACP, opening them to cop and Klan attacks, in order to destroy the organization. Since 1974 the Socialist Workers Party has fought successfully to exempt supporters of their election campaigns from disclosure, citing decades of government and rightist harassment and attacks.

The federal court ruled against the National Organization for Marriage’s legal challenge, authorizing the Ethics Commission to continue its probe into the group and ruling the commission has the power to compel it to publicly disclose names of contributors.

Announcing that National Organization for Marriage will appeal the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court, James Bopp Jr., the group’s lawyer, said, “When they disclose who they are they can reasonably expect to be harassed.”  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home