Victoria Buckley, Secretary of State of Colorado v. American Constitutional Law Foundation, Inc., et al. (525 U.S. 182)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided January 12, 1999 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 525 U.S. 182 · 119 S. Ct. 636
- Decided
- January 12, 1999
- Term
- October Term 1998
- Vote
- 6–3
- Majority author
- Justice Ginsburg
- Issue area
- First Amendment
- Disposition
- Affirmed
- Outcome
- Petitioning party lost
- Ideological direction
- Liberal
- Constitutional ruling
- State/territorial law held unconstitutional
Opinion excerpt
Justice Ginsburg delivered the opinion of the Court. Colorado allows its citizens to make laws directly through initiatives placed on election ballots. See Colo. Const., Art. V, §§1(1), (2); Colo. Rev. Stat. §§1-40-101 to 1-40-133 (1998). We review in this case three conditions Colorado places on the ballot-initiative process: (1) the requirement that initiative-petition circulators be registered voters, Colo. Rev. Stat. § 1-40-112(1) (1998); (2) the requirement that they wear an identification badge bearing the circulator’s name, § 1-40-112(2); and (3) the requirement that proponents of an initiative report the names and addresses of all paid circula-tors and the amount paid to each circulator, § 1-40-121. Precedent guides our review. In Meyer v. Grant, 486 U. S. 414 (1988), we struck down Colorado’s prohibition of payment for the circulation of ballot-initiative petitions. Petition circulation, we held, is “core political speech,” because it involves “interactive communication concerning political change.” Id., at 422 (internal quotation marks omitted). First Amendment protection for such interaction, we agreed, is "at its zenith.” Id., at 425 (internal quotation marks omitted). We have also recognized, however, that “there must be a substantial regulation of elections if they are to be fair and honest and if some sort of order, rather than chaos, is to accompany the…
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