Rightly Decided

TPPF litigators Laura Beth Latimer, Chance Weldon, Nathan Seltzer, and Clayton Calvin are wrapping up some of the final Supreme Court drops of the session with an analysis of two major election cases.

First, the team wades into a fascinating statutory interpretation battle in Watson v. Republican National Committee. What does the word "elect" actually mean, and does Election Day end when a ballot is postmarked or when it is received by the government? Then, the crew battles a labyrinth of federal acronyms to break down NRSC v. FEC, a major First Amendment case that asks whether the government can limit how much a political party coordinates spending with its own candidates.

Grab your dictionaries and prepare for a passionate rant on why money actually is speech—it’s an alphabet soup of campaign finance, preemption, and "YOLO textualism"!

In this episode: 
  • Watson v. RNC (5-4): An unusual cross-ideological majority (Barrett, Roberts, Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson) decides whether federal law preempts a Mississippi statute allowing mail-in ballots to be counted up to five days after Election Day. We discuss the difference between casting and receiving a vote and whether pragmatism should ever override textualism. 
  • NRSC v. FEC (6-3): Do limits on a political party's coordinated campaign expenditures violate the First Amendment? We break down the realities of campaign finance, quid pro quo corruption vs. prophylactic rules, and why buying poster board for a picket sign proves that money is, in fact, speech. 
  • The "Tiers of Scrutiny" Drum: Chance beats his favorite drum against arbitrary balancing tests, explaining why "closely drawn review" is just a policy-based word salad that ignores the original meaning of the First Amendment. 
  • The Alphabet Soup of Federal Law: Why the NRSC, FEC, FECA, and UOCAVA prove that we desperately need to stop using acronyms in legal briefs. 

Creators and Guests

Host
Laura Beth Latimer
Laura Beth Latimer is an attorney at the Texas Public Policy Foundation's Center for the American Future. Before moving into public-interest work, she spent four years as a felony prosecutor in the Bell County District Attorney’s Office.
Guest
Chance Weldon
Chance Weldon is the Director of Litigation at the Texas Public Policy Foundation's Center for the American Future.
Guest
Clayton Calvin
Clayton Calvin is an attorney with the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Center for the American Future. He has worked on a variety of constitutional matters, focusing mainly on separation-of-powers and federalism issues and narrowing the scope of administrative power. Prior to joining the Foundation, he worked with Colorado’s Independence Institute on constitutional and budget issues, and worked independently to limit qualified immunity and to defend the constitutional right to earn a living.
Guest
Nathan Seltzer
Nathan Seltzer is an attorney with the Center for the American Future. Prior to joining the Texas Public Policy Foundation, he worked with The Justice Foundation on pro-life and limited-government issues.

What is Rightly Decided?

Rightly Decided is a legal podcast from the Texas Public Policy Foundation's Center for the American Future, whose attorneys defend the Constitution through legal opposition to government overreach.