PORTLAND ( AP) — An appeals court on Tuesday upheld the state’s campaign disclosure law that requires a national anti-gay marriage group to release its donor list, but the group plans to take the fight to shield the list to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The decision pertains to ballot question committees in Maine and represents a second defeat for the National Organization for Marriage, which previously lost a challenge to the state’s political action committee laws and laws governing independent expenditures and advertising attribution and disclaimers.
The latest appeal focused on part of the law that says groups that raise or spend more than $5,000 to influence elections must register and disclose their donors.
NOM, which says it was founded in 2007 in response to the “ growing need for an organized opposition to samesex marriage in state legislatures,” donated $1.9 million to a political action committee that helped repeal Maine’s same-sex marriage law. It said it believes that releasing the donor list would stymie free speech.
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