On March 9, 2023, a federal jury found former Speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives Larry Householder guilty of a RICO conspiracy involving a scheme to pass a billion-dollar taxpayer-subsidized power plant bailout through the Ohio legislature in exchange for more than $60 million in contributions to a dark money nonprofit group he ran called Generation Now. FirstEnergy Corporation, the Ohio electric utility that received the bailout, admitted that these payments were bribes, and most of Householder’s co-conspirators, including Generation Now, pleaded guilty. But Householder proceeded to trial where evidence presented across six weeks demonstrated the depth of his scheme, including how he used more than $500,000 for his personal benefit, from paying his credit card debt and property taxes to funding repairs to his Florida vacation home.
Householder is now asking the Sixth Circuit to throw out his conviction. Invoking Supreme Court decisions in cases like Citizens United v. FEC and McCutcheon v. FEC, he argues that the payments he accepted were campaign contributions permitted by federal law and protected by the First Amendment.
In an amicus brief, Campaign Legal Center, the Environmental Law & Policy Center, and the Brennan Center point out the flaws in Householder’s argument. First, bribery and public corruption laws do not implicate free speech concerns because they apply only after an individual engages in a specific corrupt exchange with the requisite intent. This type of dollars-for-official-action exchange is the definition of quid pro quo corruption, which has never been protected under the Constitution. Second, the brief explores the long history of corrupt transactions involving public utilities and shows that the government’s ability to prosecute actual instances of corruption is a crucial deterrent. Finally, we explain that most of the payments Householder received do not constitute campaign contributions under Supreme Court precedent because they went to Householder’s personal use or to boost other candidates who would support his grip on the Ohio House speaker’s gavel rather than Householder’s own political campaigns.
