PDC wants court to clarify ruling

The Olympian • Published October 19, 2007

The state Public Disclosure Commission wants the state Supreme Court to clarify its recent decision that struck down a law against candidates lying about other candidates in political campaigns.

Commission vice chairman Ken Schellberg of Bellingham proposed the reconsideration request Thursday after commissioners met for an hour behind closed doors.

All four commissioners participating agreed.

Schellberg said he was “a little intrigued” by Chief Justice Gerry Alexander’s concurring opinion in the case and hoped he would elaborate.

Alexander provided the fifth, or majority, voice in the case that pitted former Green Party candidate Marylou Rickert of Shelton against the PDC, which fined her $1,000 after deciding she deliberately made false statements about the voting record of state Sen. Tim Sheldon in his 2002 re-election campaign.

The Court of Appeals rejected the finding and the Supreme Court agreed, but Alexander and the other four justices in the majority went too far “in concluding that any government censorship of political speech would run afoul of the First Amendment to the United States,” Schellberg said.

“The United States Supreme Court has ruled that defamation is not protected … The government, thus, may penalize defamatory political speech,” Alexander added in his half-page-long opinion.

PDC chairman Bill Brumsickle said the PDC wants to know whether there is still room under the decision to use defamation as a threshold for still enforcing the law against political lying.

Vicki Rippie, PDC executive director, said the court threw out the false advertising provision of the agency’s laws, but they want to know “if there is a piece of our law left that the commission could implement.”

Bill Collins of the Attorney General’s Office briefed commissioners on their options behind closed doors. The PDC has until Wednesday to file a reconsideration request; PDC attorney Nancy Krier said they have not decided whether to also appeal in federal court.