A federal judge has ordered the Kansas ethics commission to pay nearly $100,000 in attorneys’ fees after an Overland Park neighborhood group successfully challenged a state campaign finance law in court.
U.S. District Judge Dan Crabtree ordered the ethics commission to pay $98,500 in fees to the attorneys for Fresh Vision OP after he agreed to block the agency from applying the state’s definition of a political action committee.
With the latest order on Thursday, the agency is facing about $214,000 in attorneys’ fee judgments stemming from the federal case and a separate campaign finance investigation that the agency carried out for more than three years.
The latest judgment for attorneys’ fees follows another one for $85,785 that was issued for fees stemming from the wide-ranging campaign finance investigation that was focused on the Republican Party apparatus and has seemingly come to an end.
The ethics commission could face even more legal fees arising from its campaign finance investigation, but some of those are still being litigated.
Shawnee County District Judge Teresa Watson on Tuesday awarded $15,000 in attorney fees to former Johnson County Republican Party Chair Fabian Shepard after the state dropped efforts to enforce a subpoena against him.
Watson also awarded $15,000 in legal fees to former Shawnee County Republican Party Chair Cheryl Reynolds, who also had been subpoenaed as part of the investigation that was dropped against her.
On the federal case, Crabtree ruled in January that the state’s campaign law impermissibly allowed Kansas to designate Fresh Vision – “a group with a major purpose of express advocacy but no more than that” – as a political committee.
Crabtree found that the law would violate Supreme Court precedent because it would allow state ethics officials to apply the PAC requirements to Fresh Vision without first establishing that express advocacy is the group’s singular major purpose.
The court permanently blocked the state from classifying Fresh Vision as a political committee after finding that express advocacy is a major purpose – but not the major purpose – of its organization under state law.
However, Crabtree denied a request on the broader question of whether the state campaign finance law was unconstitutional, limiting his ruling only as applied to Fresh Vision.
“When government officials unlawfully restrict First Amendment rights, they should expect to lose in court and to be held financially accountable for their actions,” said Institute for Free Speech senior attorney Charles Miller.
“This outcome serves as a reminder that the First Amendment mandates that groups like Fresh Vision be permitted to speak freely, without being subject to onerous government regulations,” Miller said in a statement.
The Institute for Free Speech was co-counsel for Fresh Vision along with attorneys Ryan Kriegshauser and Josh Ney.
The lawyers representing Fresh Vision in the case filed a motion originally asking for $170,000 in lawyer’s fees and $10,000 in expenses.
The federal lawsuit was an outgrowth of an ethics complaint brought against Fresh Vision OP three years ago.
The ethics commission ruled in 2022 that Fresh Vision OP fell within the scope of the law defining a political action committee after it urged voters in 2021 to vote for Overland Park City Councilman Faris Farassati for mayor.
However, the ethics commission agreed to drop two ethics complaints against Fresh Vision members as part of an agreement that called for issuing a “letter of caution” to the group.
Fresh Vision suspended its activism after the ethics case was dropped to avoid being regulated as a political committee and to avoid exposing its officers to liability under state campaign finance laws for failing to file the required reports.
State law and regulations require a political committee to appoint a chairperson and treasurer, file a statement of organization, file a financial report, and file a report identifying each candidate who receives a donation.
As the group started looking to return to the public square, it led them to challenge the law for fear that they would face a new ethics complaint.
But it feared the ethics commission would label them again as a PAC, forcing them to be subject to state financial disclosure requirements even if they weren’t expressly advocating for candidates.
Fresh Vision’s members have long said that they are made up of neighbors whose major purpose was advocating for their community, not any particular candidate.
The group’s members told the ethics commission that they spent less than 15% of their money and less than 50% of their time on express advocacy.
They have opposed tolling on U.S. 69, new development at Overland Park’s arboretum and the use of rocky, oily material called chip seal used to preserve city streets.
More recently, they took an interest in the city’s plans to replace an outdoor pavilion with an indoor market in downtown Overland Park.
