Today, we filed a short procedural reply brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in Lieu v. Federal Election Commission, the case that could end super PACs. The goal of the Lieu litigation is to give the D.C. Circuit, or the Supreme Court, the opportunity to overturn the D.C. Circuit’s 2010 SpeechNow decision that created super PACs. Just this past Friday, we filed a petition for initial hearing en banc, asking all 11 of the court’s active judges to hear the case. Today’s filing responds to a procedural maneuver by the Federal Election Commission that tries to bypass that process.

Before we filed the petition for initial hearing en banc, the Federal Election Commission filed a motion for summary affirmance, arguing that the case was so clear that there was no point in full briefing. We responded to that motion in May, and asked the three-judge motions panel to wait until the full (en banc) court had voted on whether to grant our request for en banc hearing. In response, the FEC argued that there is no need to wait, and raised a new argument that it had not advanced earlier. Our brief today—which is expected to be the last brief in this round of motion practice—responds to the FEC’s counterarguments, and urges the motions panel to give the full court the time that it needs to decide whether to grant en banc hearing.

Read today’s reply brief.

Learn more about Lieu v. Federal Election Commission.