Colorado Ethics Watch director Luis Toro. (Photo by Colorado Ethics Watch)
Rocky Mountain Gun Owners and Colorado Campaign for Life won’t be able to sue watchdog group Colorado Ethics Watch in a fight over campaign spending during the 2014 Republican primary. In a decision dated Wednesday, U.S. District Court Judge Robert Blackburn tossed out the groups’ lawsuit that alleged Ethics Watch violated the their First Amendment rights and had a pattern of targeting conservative groups.
Ethics Watch’s complaint against the two nonprofits can’t be labeled as frivolous because they succeeded, Blackburn said. In December both groups were fined $8,500 each for failing to disclose spending on campaign mailers sent to voters in two state Senate races during the Republican primary last year.
In those cases, an administrative law judge found that since the mailings went out within 30 days of the June 24 primary, they qualified as electioneering materials that should have been noted in public campaign reports to the Secretary of State’s Office.
The groups saw Ethics Watch’s complaints as an infringement on their free speech.
“The CEW complaint at issue here was found to be valid in the state proceeding. Nothing in the evidence cited by the parties shows that CEW pursues invalid complaints as a method of harassment and/or in retaliation for certain types of political speech,” . “There is no evidence of unjustified and oppressive multiple complaints by CEW.”
In a statement Wednesday Ethics Watch director Luis Toro indicated the case was about money in politics, not Ethics Watch’s perceived political leanings.
“As a nonpartisan watchdog group, Ethics Watch files complaints for violations of the law on money in politics based on the evidence we can present in court to obtain a successful result,” he said in the statement. “We are pleased that a federal judge has reviewed the evidence and confirmed that we do not target groups based on the content of their speech.”
