In the latest judicial victory for limited government, a federal appeals court has declared the matching funds provision in Connecticut’s public funding for political candidates system to be unconstitutional.

The court’s decision was unanimous, echoing an earlier decision by the United States Supreme Court to block Arizona’s matching funds provision back in June.

“The First Amendment requires matching funds to be struck down,” said Nick Dranias, Goldwater Institute director of constitutional studies and lead attorney in the lawsuit against Arizona’s matching funds provision. “Political speech by one candidate cannot be silenced by the threat of government campaign subsidies to the opposing candidate.”

A three-judge panel for the Second Circuit declared that Connecticut’s matching funds “imposes a substantial burden on the exercise of the First Amendment right to use personal funds for campaign speech.”

The Second Circuit joined U.S. District Court Judge Roslyn O. Silver of Phoenix in recognizing that matching funds punish privately-funded candidates and their supporters by causing their campaign donations and spending to trigger tax subsidies for their opposing publicly-funded candidates.

The Second Circuit’s decision also specifically observes, “[t]he Ninth Circuit has recently upheld a ‘matching funds’ provision of Arizona’s public financing system . . . We are not persuaded by the Ninth Circuit’s opinion, which, we note, has been stayed by the Supreme Court pending [an appeal].”

The Ninth Circuit is well-known for having its decisions overturned by higher courts. The Second Circuit came to the proper conclusion: Matching funds violate the First Amendment. Political donations are as much free speech as protest signs and petitions.