Lawsuit filed by conspiracy nuts against DNC is dismissed.

[Jim Lane]

40. The judge did not make the ruling you ascribe to him.

You write:

The idiot plaintiff claimed that donors are consumers under the DC deceptive trade practices act. That claim was adressed by the court when it ruled that donors have no standing. Only an idiot would make that claim. Reread the opinion. The court's finding that donors have no standing was a polite way of stating that this claim was too stupid to address. I literally laughed when i read this in the pleadings. Do you really believe that tnis claim has merit?

Your argument is that the DC Code section doesn't apply to donations to a political party or to a campaign. Judge Zloch didn't rule on that question.

You can't just say that the judge was merely being polite, use that characterization to dismiss the judge's actual reasoning, and substitute your own view of the law.

What Judge Zloch actually said:
* "In order to maintain a class action lawsuit, the class representatives——as distinct from the putative class members——must establish their standing to sue...." (Decision, page 12) He went on to cite federal precedents because, even in a case that alleges a violation of a state statute (or, as here, a DC Code provision), standing in a federal district court is tested under federal rules.
* There are "three basic elements of Article III standing:" (1) "an invasion of a legally protected interest";
(2) "a causal connection between the injury and the conduct complained of . . . .”; and (3) a likelihood "that the injury will be ‘redressed by a favorable decision.’” (Decision, pages 12-13)

Your argument about the DC Code provision goes to the first point. If the Code doesn't apply to political donations, then the DNC's actions didn't violate the Code and therefore didn't invade a legally protected interest. What you want, to support your view, is for Judge Zloch to go on and say exactly that.

But he didn't.

In the actual opinion, he had no need to consider that first element, and with it the scope of the DC Code provision, because he went right to the second element, causation:
* "Plaintiffs fail to allege any causal connection between their injuries and Defendants’ statements." (Decision, page 13) In that regard, Judge Zloch based his decision on the inadequacy of the complaint. The putative causal connection was that defendants' false statements, which violated the DC Code, caused the plaintiffs to make their donations. The complaint, however, while alleging that they made the donations, didn't adequately allege this element of reliance.

Consider an analogy. An automobile manufacturer publishes an ad in a DC newspaper in which it makes false claims about its cars. (You describe the DC Code provision as a "deceptive trade practices act" so I assume you agree it would apply to a newspaper ad for a consumer product.) This particular ad runs only in the DC area. Someone in DC reads the ad and buys a car; on the same day, someone in Seattle, who has not seen the ad, also buys one of these cars. Does the Seattle resident have standing to sue in federal court for the violation of the DC law? No, because that Seattle buyer didn't rely on the false statements in the ad and therefore wasn't injured by them. The DC law applies to this ad, so there is "a legally protected interest", but there's no causal connection between the violation of the DC law and any injury suffered by that particular plaintiff.

That's the problem the plaintiffs here had. The equivalent of seeing the misleading newspaper ad for a car would be reading the DNC charter that contains the neutrality provision. Judge Zloch ruled that the plaintiffs lacked standing because "not one of them alleges that they ever read the DNC’s charter or heard the statements they now claim are false before making their donations." (Decision, page 13)

Did such false statements violate an interest that's legally protected by the DC Code provision? Judge Zloch didn't say Yes and he didn't say No. On either decision concerning that first element of the standing test, the plaintiffs would fail the second element, and that failure was enough to require dismissal of the case. Therefore, he didn't waste time trying to interpret the DC law.

You ask me if I think the claim under the DC Code provision has merit. I don't know. I haven't even read that provision, let alone any caselaw that it might have generated, so I'm not qualified to opine. What I can say is that, even if (as is probable) the drafters of the law weren't thinking about whether or not they were covering donations to political parties or campaigns, it's quite possible that they used broad language that would extend that far. This case could be covered even if that wasn't their intent. Leave originalism to Scalia and his ilk. A conservative friend of mine once groused to me, "The Fourteenth Amendment doesn't say anything about busing." No, it doesn't. Courts ordered busing anyway.