Tammy Holland lives with her husband and their teenage son on a farm in rural Colorado. She cares deeply about her son’s education. In September 2015, she took out two ads in her local newspaper to alert readers to an upcoming school-board election. Incumbent board members didn’t appreciate the publicity and sued Tammy—twice—for her simple act of civic engagement.
This was possible because Colorado outsourced enforcement of its campaign-finance laws to the public at large. Any private individual could have their political opponents hauled into court merely by alleging that they violated the state’s campaign-finance laws. In 2016, Tammy teamed up with the Institute for Justice to challenge this abuse-prone system in federal court. In June 2018, the court struck down the state’s private-enforcement system as a violation of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
Tammy and all Coloradans are now free to express their political opinions without fear of being sued into silence.
Related Case
First Amendment | Political Speech