Washington, DC – Federal District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly has issued an opinion in Shays v. FEC striking down 15 regulations adopted in 2002 by the Federal Election Commission (FEC) to implement the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA), the law’s sponsors Congressmen Marty Meehan (D-MA) and Christopher Shays (R-CT) announced today.

Congressmen Shays and Meehan filed the suit October 8, 2002, challenging the FEC’s rules implementing BCRA as “arbitrary and capricious” and “contrary to law.”  Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Russell Feingold (D-WI), the principal Senate sponsors of BCRA, filed an amicus brief in the case.  

"The federal district court's opinion is a victory for democracy and clean elections - and a clear rebuke of the FEC's repeated attempts to subvert campaign law and create new loopholes," Meehan said.  "By sending the FEC back to the drawing board, the court's opinion takes a critical step toward fair and appropriate enforcement of BCRA.

"The court's opinion is also further evidence that the FEC is a dysfunctional agency that does more to subvert the law than to enforce it.  Rep. Shays and I have introduced legislation to abolish the FEC and replace it with an effective, nonpartisan election body.  The 15 regulations struck down were hardly the FEC's only failures.  The FEC's failure to issue regulations concerning "527" groups is another example of the FEC acting arbitrarily to subvert the law.  Last week, Rep. Shays and I filed a second lawsuit in federal district court challenging the FEC's failure to take action to prevent 527s from illegally raising and spending soft money to influence federal elections,"  Meehan continued.

“The bottom line is, the FEC’s interpretation of our law had no basis in the reality of the statute,” Shays said.  “This is a great decision, which provides further evidence the FEC had no intention of enforcing campaign finance law as it was intended to be enforced.  Judge Collar-Kotelly really got it right when she found the Commission’s rules, failed to properly interpret the law we wrote, Congress passed, the President signed and the Supreme Court upheld.”

The suit challenged 19 provisions of the FEC’s BCRA regulations, including a number of key areas where the new regulations threatened to seriously undermine the law by creating major loopholes.  These involve regulations concerning coordination, soft money fundraising solicitations, soft money restrictions for state parties and sham issue ads.