The city filed Monday to move the case to the U.S. District Court in Denver, and the suit was transferred from Boulder District Court on Tuesday.

A group of Longmont residents, including two former mayors, sued the city earlier this month over the city’s recently revamped Longmont Fair Campaign Practices Act, saying it chills their rights to free speech.

They filed their suit against the city in Boulder District Court on Sept. 18.

But city attorneys said the case belongs in federal court because the defendants argue their First Amendment rights were violated under the U.S. Constitution and brought their claims under the Civil Rights Act.

That makes it a federal — not district — court issue, city attorneys said in court documents filed Monday.

“We just thought the federal court was a more favorable forum,” city attorney Eugene Mei said Wednesday.

The lawsuit, which also names city clerk Valeria Skitt as a defendant, attacks the city’s requirements to report individual expenditures — money that someone spends to promote a candidate without the candidate’s advice, consent or knowledge.

The city adopted its new campaign finance rules in March. Those rules set contribution limits on Longmont City Council races and knocked down the old $1,000 threshold to report independent expenditures to $100.

The law says that spending $100 or more in independent expenditures must be reported to the city clerk and all candidates in the affected race within 72 hours. People who fail to do so can be fined $200 a day for up to 10 days or until a report is filed, whichever comes first.

The suit is also being brought by Longmont Association of Realtors, former mayors Bob Askey and Julia Pirnack, local activist and blogger Chris Rodriguez and the Western Tradition Partnership, a statewide nonprofit that focuses on local, state and federal land and resource development issues.

The group suing the city argues the rules are too restrictive and the definition of “electioneering communications” too vague — and the threat of fines very real.

The move will only stall the legal process and drag out the case, said Donny Ferguson, a spokesman for Western Tradition Partnership.

“Longmont realizes a local court moves faster, and removing the case to federal court allows them a few more weeks of silencing dissent,” he wrote in a press release.

Ferguson also said that moving the case to federal court actually betters the plaintiffs’ chance of winning, although when asked why, he referred questions to attorney Scott Gessler, who could not be reached for comment.

Askey, Pirnack and Rodriguez also could not be reached for comment.

Mei said city attorneys expect the plaintiffs in the case will soon file a preliminary injunction asking the court to rule that the Longmont Fair Campaign Practices Act is not enforceable.