Judge smacks “shadowy” Alabama Democrats as ethics law is upheld

Proponents of Alabama’s ethics laws just scored a major victory, as a federal appellate court ruled on Tuesday that the state’s ban on PAC-to-PAC transfers is constitutional.

The decision came after a lawsuit, championed by the Alabama Democratic Conference (ADC), claimed that a ban on transfers between political action committees would hinder freedom of speech and make it harder for the group to raise money.

Prior to the law’s enactment, the ADC raised “about half its funds” from PAC-to-PAC transfers, court documents noted.

The problem with PAC-to-PAC transfers is that they have long been used as a funnel for “dark money”, obscuring the source of political contributions and making it nearly impossible to trace the origins of funding for a candidate or cause. For this reason, a panel of three judges on the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed that the current ethics rule should be upheld.

An opinion penned by U.S. Circuit Judge Beverly Martin, who was one of the presiding judges over the case, sheds more light on the decision. She affirmed that the ban does not limit the ADC’s ability to raise funds, but rather “only limits the ADC’s ability to raise money through a specific type of donation—PAC-to-PAC transfers.”

She also included some specific concerns over transparency issues within the Alabama Democratic Conference.

“Because of the ADC’s organizational structure, PAC donations to the ADC give rise to concerns about shadowy campaign contribution activity,” Martin wrote. “Under the PAC-to-PAC transfer ban, contributions to the ADC can no longer pass through PACs in a way that could obscure the true source of the funds.”

The law banning PAC-to-PAC transfers was passed during a special session in 2010 as part of a sweeping package of ethics reforms. At the time, the GOP-led measure earned bipartisan support, despite opposition from once-powerful groups like the Alabama Education Association.

Attorney General Luther Strange praised the decision as “a significant victory in Alabama’s ongoing fight against public corruption.”

“The PAC-to-PAC transfer ban has been instrumental in limiting campaign corruption while adding greater transparency to the elections process,” Strange said in a statement. “I am pleased the federal appeals court upheld the constitutionality of this important law.”