New Ga. Project, Inc. v. Attorney Gen.

106 F.4th 1237

NEW GEORGIA PROJECT, INC., New Georgia Project Action Fund, Inc., Plaintiffs-Appellees, v. ATTORNEY GENERAL, STATE OF GEORGIA,Chairman of Georgia Government Transparency and Campaign Finance Commission,Vice Chair of the Georgia Government Transparency and Campaign Finance Commission, Darryl Hicks,in his official capacity as a member of the Georgia Government Transparency and Campaign Finance Commission David Burge,in his official capacity as a member of the Georgia Government Transparency and Campaign Finance Commission, et al., Defendants-Appellants.

No. 22-14302

United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit

Filed: July 8, 2024

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, D.C. Docket No. 1:22-cv-03533-VMC

Aria Branch, Meaghan Elysia Mixon, David Robert Fox, Richard Alexander Medina, Elias Law Group, LLP, Washington, DC, Bryan L. Sells, Law Office of Bryan L. Sells, LLC, Atlanta, GA, for Plaintiffs-Appellees.

Stephen John Petrany, Elizabeth T. Young, James E. Barrett, Lee M. Stoy, Jr., Georgia Department of Law, Attorney General's Office, Atlanta, GA, for Defendants-Appellants.

Samuel B. Gedge, Institute for Justice, Arlington, VA, for Amicus Curiae Institute for Justice.

Randy Elf, Lakewood, NY, for Amicus Curiae Randy Elf.

Before Rosenbaum, Newsom, and Marcus, Circuit Judges.

Newsom, Circuit Judge:

In this appeal from the grant of a preliminary injunction, we are asked to decide whether two Georgia campaign-finance statutes violate the First Amendment and, as a threshold matter, whether the district court should have abstained from exercising its jurisdiction under Younger v. Harris, 401 U.S. 37, 91 S.Ct. 746, 27 L.Ed.2d 669 (1971).

After careful review, and with the benefit of oral argument, we hold that Younger and its progeny required the district court to abstain and that the court therefore erred in issuing injunctive relief. Accordingly, we needn't reach the merits of the First Amendment challenge. We vacate the district court's decision and remand with instructions that it dismiss the underlying action.

I

A

New Georgia Project is a § 501(c)(3) tax-exempt nonprofit founded by former state representative and gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams. Its mission "is to build power with and increase the civic participation of . . . Black, Latinx, AAPI, and young Georgians . . . and other historically marginalized communities" through "voter registration, organizing, and advocacy." New Georgia Project Action Fund is a § 501(c)(4) tax-exempt nonprofit whose purpose, it says, is "not the nomination or election of candidates, but rather engagement in issue advocacy." We'll refer to these two entities together as "New Georgia."

The Georgia Government Transparency and Campaign Finance Act requires individuals and entities that spend more than a specified amount on express advocacy in favor of or in opposition to a particular candidate or ballot measure to disclose those expenditures and their sources. See O.C.G.A. § 21-5-3(2), (15); id. § 21-5-34(a), (f). The Act also requires "campaign committees" and "independent committees" to register with the Georgia Government Transparency and Campaign Finance Commission. Id. § 21-5-34(a), (f). Under the Act, there are different types of "campaign committees," one of which exists to urge the adoption or rejection of ballot measures and which we'll call a "ballot committee." Id. § 21-5-34(a). An "independent committee" is any entity other than a "campaign committee, political party, or political action committee" that receives donations and spends money to advocate for the election or defeat of a candidate. Id. § 21-5-3(15).

New Georgia never registered with the Commission, nor did it did file disclosure reports during the 2018 or 2019 campaign seasons.

B

In September 2019, a Commission staff attorney filed formal complaints with the Commission alleging that New Georgia had engaged in significant election spending in 2018 and 2019 without registering or filing the required disclosures. The complaints asserted that the money New Georgia spent advocating on behalf of candidates qualified it as an "independent committee" within the meaning of the Act and that the money it spent to support a transit-expansion ballot measure qualified it as a "ballot committee."

The Commission initiated an investigation. It subpoenaed New Georgia's bank records, campaign materials, and invoices in an effort to determine whether the organization had engaged in undisclosed election spending. New Georgia filed a motion to quash the subpoena, which the Commission denied. The Commission then subpoenaed Wells Fargo to obtain New Georgia's bank records. New Georgia moved a Georgia state court to quash that subpoena too, but that motion was also denied.

Based on information discovered through the subpoenas, a staff attorney filed an amended complaint with the Commission. It alleged that New Georgia had violated the Act by failing to disclose more than $4.2 million in contributions and $3.2 million in expenditures during the 2018 primary, general, and run-off elections. It also alleged that New Georgia had violated the Act by failing to disclose $646,422 in contributions and $173,643 in expenditures to support a transit-related ballot initiative. The Commission notified New Georgia that it would hold a preliminary hearing at which it could contest the charges.

The following chronology is important: The preliminary hearing before the Commission occurred on August 1, 2022. Three days later, on August 4, the Commission issued an order finding "reasonable grounds" to conclude that New Georgia had violated the Act and referring the case to the Georgia Attorney General's office for further proceedings.

About four weeks later, on August 31, New Georgia filed a civil-rights action in federal district court against the Georgia Attorney General and the members of the Commission—collectively, "the state"—claiming that the Act violated the First and Fourteenth Amendments, both on its face and as applied. A little more than a week thereafter, on September 8, New Georgia moved the district court to issue a preliminary injunction preventing the state from enforcing the Act against it. Citing Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1, 96 S.Ct. 612, 46 L.Ed.2d 659 (1976), New Georgia contended that the Act's disclosure requirements couldn't constitutionally be applied to it because its "major purpose" wasn't nominating or electing a candidate. Id. at 79, 96 S.Ct. 612. New Georgia also argued that the Act swept too broadly by regulating all expenditures made "for the purpose of influencing" a nomination or election, even in the absence of "express advocacy." Id. at 23, 48, 96 S.Ct. 612; O.C.G.A. § 21-5-3(7), (12).

Meanwhile, back in the state proceeding, about two weeks later, on September 21, the Georgia Attorney General formally transferring the enforcement action to the Office of State Administrative Hearings ("OSAH") for an evidentiary hearing.

Several months passed, and in December the federal court issued an order preliminarily enjoining enforcement of the Act against New Georgia. In so doing, the district court rejected the state's arguments (1) that under Younger v. Harris, 401 U.S. 37, 91 S.Ct. 746, 27 L.Ed.2d 669 (1971), the court should abstain from exercising its jurisdiction on the ground that the state's ongoing enforcement action provided New Georgia an adequate opportunity to vindicate its First Amendment rights and (2) that, on the merits, preliminary injunctive relief was inappropriate. The court noted that there was no dispute that the Commission's prosecution of New Georgia qualified as the sort of a civil-enforcement proceeding to which Younger abstention might apply. But, the court concluded, the state's action wasn't "ongoing" in a way that would trigger Younger's application until the matter was formally transferred to OSAH on September 21, 2022. Because by that time—and we'll get into the details in due course—New Georgia's federal suit had been pending for several weeks, the district court held that Younger and its progeny didn't require abstention.

Having determined that it didn't have to abstain, the district court proceeded to hold that the Act's ballot- and independent-committee provisions were facially invalid under the First Amendment. In particular, although the court recognized that the state had important interests in promoting transparency and ensuring that voters have necessary information, and that the Act's disclosure requirements were substantially related to those interests, it held that those requirements weren't sufficiently tailored and swept too broadly. After finding that the usual equitable factors weighed in New Georgia's favor, the court enjoined the enforcement of the challenged provisions.

This is the state's appeal.

II

Before us, the state contends, as a threshold matter, that the district court abused its discretion in declining to abstain under Younger from exercising its jurisdiction to issue injunctive relief. See Walker v. City of Calhoun, 901 F.3d 1245, 1255 (11th Cir. 2018) (holding that a district court's Younger abstention decision is reviewed for abuse of discretion). For reasons we'll explain, we agree that Younger and its progeny required the district court to abstain. Accordingly, we will vacate and remand on that ground, without addressing the merits of New Georgia's First Amendment challenge.

A

More than 200 years ago now, Chief Justice Marshall explained that federal courts "have no more right to decline the exercise of jurisdiction which is given, than to usurp that which is not given"—either, he warned, would be "treason to the constitution." Cohens v. Virginia, 19 U.S. (6 Wheat.) 264, 404, 5 L.Ed. 257 (1821). And in the years since, the Supreme Court has "often acknowledged that federal courts have a strict duty to exercise the jurisdiction that is conferred upon them by Congress," Quackenbush v. Allstate Ins. Co., ...