TBA Law Blog

TBA Law Blog

Bureau of Ethics and Campaign Finance Found Guilty of Contempt

Posted by: Stacey Shrader Joslin on Apr 20, 2022

Senior Judge Thomas J. Wright on Monday ruled that the Tennessee Bureau of Ethics and Campaign Finance was guilty of “willfully” violating a court order barring the collection of registration fees from nonpartisan political action committees. The judge issued the injunction in 2018 after finding that the law requiring the fees was unconstitutional. He is now ordering the state agency to refund $64,000 in registration fees and threatening “coercive fines” if the agency fails to pay within 15 days, Tennessee Lookout reports. The nonpartisan political action committee Tennesseans for Sensible Election Laws successfully challenged a state law that required nonpartisan PACs, but not partisan PACs, from paying a $100 registration fee. After the injunction, the agency stopped collecting the fees for more than two years but began again in January 2021 “apparently after some discussion with the Tennessee Attorney General’s office,” Wright said in his contempt order.

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