Will the Supreme Court Rebuke California’s Assault on the First Amendment?

From George Will at National Review:

These truths should be on the Supreme Court’s nine fine minds on Friday when they consider whether to hear a challenge to a lower court’s decision that disregards some clear Supreme Court pronouncements pertaining to the First Amendment. The amendment says there shall be no laws abridging freedom of speech, but various governments are persistently trying to regulate, and perhaps chill, advocacy. The most recent wrinkle in this disreputable project comes from California.

There the Democratic attorney general has decreed that all entities wishing to solicit tax-deductible contributions in California must disclose their donors to the state government. ......

The CCP asked the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for protection from the attorney general’s decree. The appeals court sided with California’s attorney general, so the CCP is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse the Ninth Circuit and rebuke California’s attorney general. Doing so, the Supreme Court would be defending a doctrine adumbrated in decisions over six decades.

In the 1950s, when the civil rights movement was surging, an Alabama court, pursuant to a state law requiring corporations doing business in the state to produce certain information, ordered the state chapter of the NAACP to produce, among other things, its membership lists. In 1958, the Supreme Court upheld the NAACP’s refusal, finding that forced disclosure would serve no compelling state interest and would deter civil rights supporters from exercising their constitutional rights of free speech and association.

It was Democrats trying to intimidate the NAACP’s donors back then, too. Some things don’t change, I guess.