The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments this morning in a consolidated case that will determine whether public campaign financing systems that include so-called “equalizing” funds are legal. The transcript is available already, and the audio recording should be available soon.

The two cases which have been consolidated are Arizona Free Enterprise Club’s Freedom Club PAC v. Bennett and McComish v. Bennett. Those links will take you to all of the associated paperwork in the two cases, including supporting briefs filed by a long list of organizations.

From the SCOTUSblog:

The combined brief on the merits of all of the Arizona challengers focused most heavily upon the burden they contended is imposed on them by the subsidy scheme. The brief opened with these colorful statements: “Public financing in Arizona’s matching funds systems forces a yoke around the neck of traditionally funded candidates.” When they spend campaign money above the specified limit, they are “literally force[d]…to press a button on their computer that will trigger the payment of subsidies to the very participating candidates they oppose.” What they are then doing, it added, is helping to spread their opponents’ private political message as a consequence of their own free speech during the campaign. Their own labor and campaign resources are the trigger for aid to their rivals, it contended.

And, in summarizing its legal arguments, the brief began with a quotation from former Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, who had joked that she was “the only Democratic governor in the country for whom George Bush has held a fundraiser,” because an event for her opponent, with President Bush as the speaker, raised enough money that it triggered a $750,000 matching payout for Napolitano.

That, the brief summed up, is punishment, because it works as a deterrent on a non-subsidized candidate’s campaign. Being the instrument for “dissemination of ideas one opposes or abhors” is a severe condition on the right to run for office and spend money on campaign speech, the brief argued. This is compelled speech of a kind that the Supreme Court has clearly condemned, it asserted.

Hawaii has a lot riding on this case, since our pilot project in Hawaii County uses this kind of mechanism to provide extra funds to publicly funded candidates facing privately funded opponents.