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1 1 (January 10, 2020)

handle is hein.crs/govbixv0001 and id is 1 raw text is: Cor 101 1 Researh Servi kM- Appeals Court Says First Amendment Limits Regulation of Online Political Advertising: Implications for Congress January 10, 2020 The proliferation of online political advertising has sparked a national conversation about its perceived harms. Some have argued that online political ads are more likely than their offline counterparts to include false claims and facilitate foreign influence in U.S. elections. These criticisms have led to calls for more government regulation of online political advertising, and some government officials have responded to that call. For example, in June, the chair of the Federal Election Commission (FEC), the federal entity that generally regulates political campaign communications, advanced a rule proposal that would require certain online political advertisements to contain attribution statements, known as disclaimers. Another example is the Honest Ads Act, which would extend federal campaign finance law disclosure and disclaimer requirements to online platforms for paid internet and paid digital communications and would require online platforms to maintain a publicly available file of requests to purchase certain political advertising. That bill was incorporated into H.R. 1 (116th Cong.), which passed the House in March 2019, and has been reintroduced as a stand-alone bill in both the House and the Senate. While there have been few, if any, enacted federal laws focusing on online political advertisements, a number of states have passed legislation on this front. However, regulation of political speech can raise free speech concerns, and laws regulating online political advertising may be susceptible to constitutional challenges. On December 6, 2019, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit (Fourth Circuit) ruled in Washington Post v. McManus that parts of a Maryland law regulating online political advertising violated the First Amendment because they impermissibly burdened political speech, as applied to certain online publications. This Sidebar discusses the McManus decision and what it suggests about possible constitutional limitations on Congress's ability to regulate in this area. Background Maryland enacted the Online Electioneering Transparency and Accountability Act (OETA or the Act) in May 2018. The Act extends the state's campaign finance disclosure requirements for television, radio, and print advertisements to online political advertisements, requiring adpurchasers to make specific Congressional Research Service https://crsreports.congress.gov LSB10393 CRS Lega Sidebar Prepaed for Membeivs and Cornm ittees o4 Cor~qress ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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