A federal judge has refused to block enforcement of Colorado’s caps on campaign donations, finding the six-week-old lawsuit from a trio of Republican candidates had not unearthed sufficient facts to deem such limits unconstitutional.

U.S. District Court Senior Judge John L. Kane cast doubt on the arguments and data that the plaintiffs offered in support of their requests for a preliminary injunction, and reasoned that Colorado’s limits on what individuals can contribute to political campaigns were justified by the government’s interest in combatting corruption.

“I stress that there is no right to give or receive unlimited political contributions and no right to be free from having to make a choice regarding campaign financing,” Kane wrote in a March 10 order. “The harm produced by corruption or its appearance to the common interests of all citizens is self-evident. One would have to ignore the traditions and expressed values of this nation from its inception to conclude otherwise.”

Earlier in the week, Kane had heard from the plaintiffs in the lawsuit: Rep. Rod Pelton, R-Cheyenne Wells; Greg Lopez, a past and current Republican candidate for governor; and Steve House, a former state Republican Party chair and Congressional District 6 candidate. They had testified about the hardships of running a campaign with Colorado’s restrictive contribution limits. At $400 for legislative candidates and $1,250 for statewide candidates per election cycle, the caps for individual donors are among the lowest in the country.

The limits are enshrined in Article 28 of the state constitution, which voters approved in 2002. The plaintiffs’ lawyers hired an expert witness who opined that Colorado’s limits on fundraising make it “somewhat harder” for challengers to run competitive campaigns against incumbents.

The Colorado Attorney General’s Office countered that the constitutional caps were less restrictive, in some ways, than other campaign finance schemes the U.S. Supreme Court had deemed problematic. The government also called into question the accuracy of the expert witness’s data.

Kane agreed that he had doubts about the “reliability and accuracy” of the data from the plaintiffs, and reiterated that there was simply not enough information for him to nullify a state constitutional provision on the doorstep of the 2022 election.

“The public has a significant interest in not suffering the reverberations of a federal court order that declares a constitutional referendum unconstitutional on the basis of an incomplete record,” the judge added.

The U.S. Supreme Court in 2006 established a set of five factors for determining whether a state’s donation limits to candidates are so low as to violate the First Amendment. Overly-restrictive caps harm the ability of challengers to conduct effective campaigns, explained the court.

Kane decided several factors weighed in favor of the government. For example, there was no apparent disadvantage to challengers from Article 28’s donation limits. Political parties are able to donate substantially higher amounts to candidates. And while the caps for legislative candidates have not experienced an inflationary increase since 2002, Article 28 does permit the caps to rise.

Kane blasted the plaintiffs’ “significant misunderstanding of the law,” and pointed out that the preliminary injunction seeking to block enforcement of the contribution caps would alter the status quo, meaning there needed to be a strong showing the plaintiffs would succeed on their underlying case. Kane did not believe they were likely to prevail.

The judge also reached that conclusion on the plaintiffs’ second claim challenging another Article 28 provision, which makes candidates eligible to collect donations twice as large as the constitutional caps if they agree voluntarily to limit their overall spending.

“Again, there is no First Amendment right to be free from having to make a choice regarding campaign financing,” Kane wrote.

Attorneys for the conservative group Advance Colorado and the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Free Speech filed suit on Jan. 28 against Secretary of State Jena Griswold on behalf of the Republican candidates. Daniel Burrows, the lawyer with Advance Colorado, declined to comment, but noted the lawsuit will proceed in the absence of an injunction.

The case is Lopez et al. v. Griswold et al.