Oxnard’s Campaign Limits for City Elections Pass Muster

Thursday, April 23, 2026

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Ninth Circuit:

Oxnard’s Campaign Limits for City Elections Pass Muster

En Banc Court Reverses Course From Panel Decision Striking Measures Down as Violative of First Amendment, Drawing Dissent From Two Jurists

By Kimber Cooley, associated editor

An en banc panel of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held yesterday that caps on campaign contributions for candidates running for city office, adopted by Oxnard in 2020 purportedly in response to reports of corruption by the municipality’s leaders, survive First Amendment challenges, reversing course from a 2024 decision by a three-judge panel and drawing dissent over the appropriate level of judicial scrutiny.

At issue are Oxnard City Code provisions adopted following voter approval of the Oxnard Government Accountability and Ethics Act (“Measure B”) in March 2020. The proposal made its way to the ballot by way of a resolution passed by the City Council in October 2019.

The sections limit contributions to each city council campaign to $500 per election cycle for individuals and to $1000 for political action committees (“PACS”). Higher limits apply for citywide elections, including for those running for mayor, clerk, and treasurer, with the ceiling for those offices set at $750 per person or $1,500 per PAC; the rules also bar the municipality’s elected officials from accepting gifts.

Circuit Judge Lucy H. Koh wrote yesteday’s decision, joined in by Chief Judge Mary H. Murguia as well as Circuit Judges Kim McLane Wardlaw, Consuelo M. Callahan, Jacqueline H. Nguyen, John B. Owens, Ryan D. Nelson, Eric D. Miller, Lucy H. Koh, and Jennifer Sung, declaring:

“This case concerns whether Measure B’s campaign contribution limits, adopted and approved by 82% of the City’s voters, are constitutional….We…hold that [the challenged provisions] are constitutional.”

Level of Scrutiny

The author of the 2024 three-panel decision, Circuit Judge Daniel P. Collins, dissented, arguing that the majority failed to take into account the effect of the 2010 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in Citizens United v. FEC and its progeny on the level of scrutiny applicable to campaign contribution limitations. Analyzing the provisions under the proper standard, he opined that the per candidate cap fails to pass muster, saying:

“Although the City’s evidence might be sufficient to satisfy the embarrassingly low…standard [established by Ninth Circuit jurisprudence preceding Citizens United]…, it does not meet the correct, more demanding standard required under current Supreme Court authority.”

Pointing to a history of antipathy between the “elected officials over the years immediately preceding Measure B’s adoption” and Aaron Starr, an unsuccessful candidate for mayor in 2018 who serves as the president of the non-profit that brought the challenge to Measure B, Collins noted that Starr was one of only two candidates who succeeded in raising large-dollar contributions in the previous election cycle. He wrote:

“[T]he City’s contribution limits present sufficient ‘danger signs’ of ‘constitutional risks to the democratic electoral process’….Specifically, the record reflects a significant risk that the City may be engaged in ‘invidious discrimination’ against Starr and challengers like him.”

Circuit Judge Lawrence VanDyke joined in Collins’ dissent.

Complaint Filed

Moving Oxnard Forward, Inc. (“MOF”), a political advocacy group, filed a complaint in May 2020 against then-Oxnard City Clerk Michelle Ascension, asserting claims under 42 U.S.C. §1983 based on allegations that the campaign contribution caps violate the First Amendment. He sought injunctive and declaratory relief.

On Aug. 5, 2021, District Court Judge Consuelo B. Marshall of the Central District of California granted summary judgment to the city, concluding that the defendant had demonstrated a sufficiently important governmental interest in rooting out corruption and that the rules were closely drawn to meet those goals.

In so ruling, she relied on a 2010 report by the Ventura County District Attorney’s Office, developed following local news reports of alleged corruption involving city officials receiving undeclared gifts from companies doing business with the municipality.

The prosecutorial office concluded that “accepting gifts from companies doing business with the [City] was fairly common among some [City] officials,” including rounds of golf, flights on private jets, and tickets to professional sports games, and referred the issues to the California Fair Political Practices Commission for administrative enforcement.

In Dec. 2024, a three-judge panel consisting of Collins, Circuit Judge Mark J. Bennett, and District Court Judge Stephen Joseph Murphy III of the Eastern District of Michigan, sitting by designation, reversed the ensuing judgment. The opinion was vacated last June after a majority of non-recused active judges voted for the case to be reheard en banc.

Koh said:

“We first ask whether there is evidence of a sufficiently important governmental interest….The Supreme Court has ‘identified only one legitimate governmental interest’ in imposing a contribution limit: targeting ‘quid pro quo corruption or its appearance.’ ”

Pointing to the 2017 Ninth Circuit decision in Lair v. Motl, she said that courts have only required locality to show that the risk of quid pro quo corruption or its appearance is more than conjecture and is not “illusory” to show that the interest is a real concern.

Saying that, “a contribution limit may still be ‘too low and too strict to survive First Amendment scrutiny,’ ” she noted the high court has set forth four “danger signs” indicating that the caps may be unconstitutionally set.

If a danger sign is present, the court must analyze whether the caps are appropriately tailored. Applying the standard, she remarked that “the City has established a sufficiently important governmental interest in preventing “quid pro quo corruption or its appearance,” pointing to the “investigation by the District Attorney, resulting in the Report detailing numerous instances of behaviors that gave rise to the appearance of quid pro quo corruption.”

Commenting that “[i]t is no matter that the Report concluded that there was insufficient evidence to warrant criminal prosecution,” she also found it irrelevant that the document was published “almost eight years before Measure B.”

Turning to whether the chosen contribution limitations are “closely drawn” to the city’s interest in preventing corruption, she said that the court assumed without deciding that one “danger sign” was present.

Looking to “five sets of considerations” outlined by governing case law, including the effect on challengers, whether the rules applied to political parties, and if inflation is taken into account, she declared that “the per candidate contribution limits will not significantly restrict the amount of funding available” for contestants.

Explaining that “only two of twelve candidates in 2018 raised the majority of their funds from contributions that would have exceeded Measure B’s limits,” she acknowledged that Starr “had three of his five donors give in amounts over the contribution limits, with $4,750 of his $8,250 raised above the limits” in his 2018 bid for mayor.

Pointing out that Measure B “does not limit political party contributions” and provides that the caps “shall be adjusted every two…years by resolution of the City Council,” she opined that “there are no ‘serious associational and expressive problems’ arising from Measure B’s individual contribution limits, and thus a special justification is unnecessary.”

Asserting that the majority improperly relied on a standard that is “inconsistent with current Supreme Court authority,” Collins commented that the court “should take this opportunity to overrule the [Lair] decision en banc.” He wrote:

“A mere showing that concerns about quid pro quo corruption are not ‘conjecture’ or ‘illusory’ is not enough to carry the government’s threshold burden….[S]uch a standard is inconsistent with current Supreme Court authority because, in practice, that standard allows the government to enact contribution limits based merely on broad and amorphously defined concerns about ‘the appearance of mere influence or access.’ ”

Applying “the correct threshold standard,” he opined that “the City’s evidence is plainly inadequate to justify its adoption of campaign contribution limits” as the cited District Attorney’s report, when viewed in the light most favorable to the plaintiff, “identifies a number of areas that are in need of reform, but campaign contributions are not among them.”

Arguing that “the City adopted campaign finance limitations that, as explained in the City’s supporting materials, would have little practical impact on any recent candidates for municipal elections except for one—Aaron Starr,” Collins added:

“Starr has been very active in Oxnard politics, and in doing so he has consistently relied on larger-dollar contributions that, as the City notes, made him a ‘stark’ ‘outlier’ among local candidates. The new campaign contribution limitations, which the City admits ‘will force [Starr] to change this practice,’ were proposed by the City the year after Starr engineered an ultimately unsuccessful recall effort against a majority of the City Council and came in second in the race for Mayor.”

The case is Moving Oxnard Forward Inc. v. Lopez, 21-56295.