The U.S. Supreme Court is allowing the Jan. 6 committee to subpoena the phone records of the head of Arizona’s Republican party who was in touch with Trump and his staff while texting election officials to stop counting ballots in Arizona. Kelli Ward claimed that the quest for records posed a threat to her First Amendment rights. (Courthouse News Service, November 14, 2022, by Kelsey Reichmann)
Ward had tried to apply the decision in Americans for Prosperity Foundation v. Bonta in which the U.S. Supreme Court ended a California requirement that charitable organizations must disclose the identities of their major donors. Ward said the Jan. 6 subpoena compelled disclosure in violation of her rights of association. The Ninth Circuit rejected that argument saying that the subpoena was a narrow quest to obtain records of a particular person during an investigation, and she produced no evidence that revealing the records would produce harassment interfering with her rights to association. (Constitutional Law Prof Blog, November 14, 2022, by Steven D. Schwinn)