The Student Government judicial court handed down two penalties on Tuesday to the Inspire ticket; it violated the election code by using people in its campaign video without their consent.
Six penalties disqualify a campaign from the election.
The Inspire ticket, headed by political communications junior Byron Hansley and biological sciences junior Amber Salone, took video footage from LSU’s social media and used it in its campaign announcement video released on Feb. 5.
The Innovate ticket, headed by political science and screen arts junior Anna Cate Strong and political science junior Gigi Powers, argued that this violated a part of the SG election code that prohibits the use of a student or a student organization’s image or name without their consent.
“No candidate or authorized agent thereof may use the image or name of another student or student organization in any photo or video constituting campaign material without first obtaining the verbal or written consent of the student or student organization,” reads SG election code 810, section two, the basis of Innovate’s complaint.
SG campaigns are only allowed to campaign within a five-day window, but they’re allowed to promote their campaigns on social media.
The court ruled that the campaign video counted as campaign material, but it was allowed under the social media exceptions in the election code; therefore, it was subject to restrictions laid out for campaign material in the election code, including prohibitions on using images of people without their permission.
The hearing was presided over by two law students, chief judge Julien LeBlanc and judge Madison Latiolais, and economics junior judge Brookes Belanger.
The counselor for the Innovate ticket, political science junior Drew Prude, argued the video should be considered a form of campaign material subject to section two of the election code. Prude argued that campaign material isn’t subject to the social media exception for campaigning, so code 810 section 2 applied to it.
Prude said, even if the social media exception applied, he didn’t think it affected their case, saying that code 810 section 2 would still apply to the video promoting the Inspire ticket if it was considered campaign material.
“If you were to not allow this to apply, simply because it was not campaign material, really then when is 810-2 applicable?” Prude said. “Is it only during campaign season, during that five days those are the only days you’re not allowed to use anybody’s image?”
Prude argued that the Inspire campaign committed nine violations throughout the video; eight were for the students whose likeness was used, and one was for the baseball team as a whole. The court did not take this approach; they only issued one violation.
Biological and agricultural engineering senior Alex Basse, counselor for the Inspire ticket, argued the video should be considered campaigning, not campaign material. She argued that the video would fall under the campaigning exception for social media, and 810 section 2 couldn’t apply to it because it only references campaign materials.
Basse argued that if their video was to be considered campaign material, meaning it would fall under 810 section 2, then the others campaign videos would also be considered campaign material and would violate the election code prohibition against distributing campaign materials outside of the campaign season in 809 section 1.
“If this social media is a campaign material and is campaigning, then every single one of us are disqualified, because we have all posted multiple times outside the campaign period,” Basse said.
Basse argued that, if the video is considered to violate the code, it should be one violation, due to precedent in the Supreme Court case Wooden V. United States. In that case, where a sense of ambiguity surrounds the facts of a case, the court should be more lenient to the defense. The court ultimately took this approach and considered it one violation.
Strong said she was happy to see the court provide more clarity for the upcoming campaign season.
“I’m just excited to see things defined more clearly in the code,” Strong said. “‘Cause it’s gonna matter a lot, especially the definitions of campaign versus campaign material later in the campaign season, so the fact that we can get those defined now is really nice.”
Hansley said their ticket respected the court’s decision on the case and would continue to push its campaign forward.
“We respect the court’s decision, it’s really not gonna stop anything. When me and Amber got into this, it was never to fight against another campaign, it’s to fight to make sure that the student body progresses and moves forward with a new vision and direction,” Hansley said. “So, at the end of the day, this does not stop anything at all. If anything, it fuels us to want to continue going and making a bigger impact on campus.”
