Tony Mauro reports in The Recorder that the U.S. Supreme Court is rejecting amicus briefs funded by GoFundMe campaigns if the briefs don’t list all the campaign donors.
The article cites the Court’s rule 37.6 that requires an amicus brief to “identify every person other than the amicus curiae, its members, or its counsel, who made . . . a monetary contribution” that was “intended to fund the preparation or submission of the brief.” The article also includes this statement from the Court’s public information office, “The Clerk’s Office interprets this language [of Rule 37.6] to preclude an amicus from filing a brief if contributors are anonymous.”
The same principle could be true for California Supreme Court amicus briefs, because the state high court has a very similar rule. Rule 8.520(f)(4)(B) states that an application to file an amicus brief must identify “[e]very person or entity who made a monetary contribution intended to fund the preparation or submission of the brief, other than the amicus curiae, its members, or its counsel in the pending appeal.”