Nevada Supreme Court order allows Drug Czar to ignore state campaign finance laws
MPP's first victory in "War on Drug Czar" campaign is short-lived; Nevada Supreme Court order allows Drug Czar to ignore state campaign finance laws
On May 6, 2004, MPP scored its first victory in its War on Drug Czar campaign when the Nevada Supreme Court issued an order declaring that MPP had "set forth issues of arguable merit" in its writ of mandamus filed two weeks earlier. This writ was filed as an appeal of the April 2003 opinion from the Nevada Attorney General (see a full list of related complaints) which concluded that the drug czar was not required to comply with Nevada's campaign finance laws. Because of this order, the state was forced to file an answer to MPP's writ.
Unfortunately, on August 18, 2004, the Court abruptly reversed course and declared, in a one-paragraph decision, that it was "not satisfied that [the] court's intervention by way of extraordinary relief is warranted." Notably, the Court completely failed to address the critical issue in the writ ? whether a federal official may be required by a state to file campaign finance reports. (Download the decision.)
MPP originally filed its complaint with the Nevada Secretary of State in December 2002 in order to force the drug czar to reveal how much of the taxpayers' money he had spent in an effort to defeat MPP's 2002 marijuana regulation ballot initiative.
