Big Sky Times

A decision by Montana’s Commissioner of Political Practices Jeff Mangan to impose fines and penalties against a right-leaning, political action committee was politically motivated, according to a federal lawsuit filed July 22. 

Convention of States Political Fund asserts it was acting in good faith and in coordination with Mangan to remain within existing regulations when COPP issued the PAC a notice of violation and continues to threaten civil enforcement proceedings and hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines, according to the lawsuit.

"Nothing had changed between COPP’s initial April 25 advice and its second interaction with CSPF [on] May 25, except that by late-May 2022, COPP knew the identity and political party of the candidates CSPF had supported, and the content of CSPF’s political speech," the lawsuit said.

CSPF attorneys contend in the lawsuit that in issuing a violation and pursuing fines COPP has violated CSPF's rights under the First and 14th Amendments.      

Mangan ruled earlier this year that CSPF violated state campaign laws by spending $126,752 to support three Republican, legislative primary candidates in Montana, the Montana Free Press reported.

The fact that the organization is based in Michigan did not exempt it from having to report the Montana expenditures to Mangan's office "in a timely fashion," the story said.

The CSPF lawsuit cited the non-resident disclosure requirements in particular as "impermissibly vague both as written and as interpreted and enforced by COPP against CSPF."

CSPF also said the campaign finance laws are so vague that they threaten free speech.

"Laws that are impermissibly vague offend due process because they contravene two bedrock constitutional norms," the lawsuit said. "Vague laws thus stand in basic opposition to the rule of law. For laws implicating First Amendment freedoms, the void-for-vagueness doctrine has special purchase. When a law implicating free speech is impermissibly vague, it risks repressing the very discourse that the First Amendment protects and encourages."

A vague law "also poses heightened risks of arbitrary enforcement, inviting disparate treatment of less popular speakers or viewpoints," the lawsuit alleges.

On its website, CSPF describes itself as "supporting efforts to call a Convention of States; a national effort to call a convention under Article V of the U.S. Constitution restricted to proposing amendments that will impose fiscal restraints on the federal government, limit its power and jurisdiction, and impose term limits on its officials and members of Congress."

The attorney representing CSPF is Edward Greim, a partner at Graves Garrett, LLC, who specializes in complex, commercial litigation, free speech, and election law, and internal investigations and whistleblower claims.