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UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
MIDDLE DISTRICT OF FLORIDA
TAMPA DIVISION
| AMERICAN CHARITIES FOR REASONABLE FUNDRAISING REGULATION, INC., et. al., |
|
| v. | Case No. 97-2058 CIV-T-17 Judge Elizabeth A. Kovachevich |
| PINELLAS COUNTY, et. al., |
OPPOSITION TO DEFENDANTS’ NOTICE OF ADOPTION
PLEASE TAKE NOTICE, that the Plaintiffs oppose the adoption of the Memorandum of Amici Curiae Hubert H. Humphrey III, Minnesota Attorney General in support of the Defendants in the case of American Target Advertising v. Giani, Case No. 2:97-cv-610 D.Utah 1997) on the following four (4) grounds: (1) that case is factually distinguishable from the case at bar, as set forth in the Plaintiffs’ Memorandum in Opposition to the Defendants’ Motion for Summary Judgment at page 5; (2) the case in Utah has not yet been decided, and therefore has no precedential value; (3) the Amici Curiae brief adopted by the Defendants is currently subject to a Motion to Strike, and (4) the Defendants did not properly obtain permission to file so many papers with this court. Accordingly, this court should strike the Amici Curiae brief filed by the Defendants.
PLEASE TAKE FURTHER NOTICE, that in the event that this court finds the briefs filed in the American Target case relevant to the case at bar and does not strike the Amici Curiae brief adopted by the Defendants, the Plaintiffs request the similar adoption of the Memorandum submitted by the Plaintiff in the Utah case response to the Amici Curiae Memorandum as well as the Utah Plaintiff’s Memoranda in Support of its Motions for Summary Judgment and Preliminary Injunction. Those Memoranda are attached hereto as Exhibit “A.”
The Plaintiffs wish to make this Court aware that the Amici Curiae brief is subject to a Motion to Strike on the grounds that it contains exhibits and factual statements which are demonstrably false and misleading. Specifically, the Amici Curiae brief adopted by the Defendants contain the following distortions of fact: (1) it uses the term “fundraiser” to refer to three different types of charitable service providers (professional solicitor, professional fundraiser, and professional fundraising counsel), thereby allowing the regulators to mislead the court with statistics regarding solicitors and fundraisers in order to justify regulations on professional fundraising counsel such as American Target Advertising and the Plaintiffs herein; (2) it relies on data collected by other government regulators which inaccurately characterizes the costs of a mailing (such as postage, ink and envelopes) as costs paid to a charity’s fundraisers, thereby artificially inflating the amount of money allegedly paid to fundraisers in the hopes of creating a “crisis” that those same government regulators can step in to “solve;” and (3) it omits legitimate allocations made by charities of expenditures for public education costs, as well as the costs of complying with mandatory disclosure and registration laws, and attempts to mislead the public into believing that such costs are somehow illegitimate. Moreover, in alleging that the amounts paid by charities to fundraisers are so great as to justify government regulation, the brief of the Amici Curiae ignores clear legal precedent that governments simply may not label as fraudulent those charities that do not retain whatever percentage of funds raised that the government deems appropriate, see Riley v. National Federation of the Blind of North Carolina, 487 U.S. 781 (1988). Accordingly, if this court deems the American Target case relevant, it should accord little if any weight to the adopted brief of Amici Curiae.
I HEREBY CERTIFY that a copy of the foregoing has been furnished by United States Mail to CARL BRODY, Jr., Assistant County Attorney, 315 Court Street, Clearwater, FL 33756, on this 23rd day of June, 1998.
______________________
ALSION STEELE
Rahdert, Anderson, McGowan & Steele, P.A.,
535 Central Avenue
St. Petersburg, FL 33701