Two Decisions Highlight Campaign Finance Uncertainty, More 'Freewheeling' System
Two court decisions on Friday tried to sort out the aftermath of the U.S. Supreme Court’s January campaign finance ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. The new rulings dealt with the constitutionality of laws that restrict the size of contributions to groups supporting political candidates.
The New York Times describes the two Friday rulings this way: “One court said that individual contributions to advocacy groups known as 527s may not be limited. Another said that contributions to political parties can, though it said it was aware the resulting playing field might not be a level one.”
In upholding limits on contributions to political parties, a special three-judge panel in Washington, D.C., ruled against a challenge by the Republican National Committee and local GOP groups.
The U.S. District Court panel, ruling under an expedited review provision of the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance law, said the 2002 Supreme Court ruling McConnell v. FEC controlled, and it did not have the authority to “clarify or refine” the decision, the National Law Journal reports.
The Supreme Court upended campaign finance law in January when it ruled in Citizens United that corporations have a First Amendment right to support political candidates for Congress and the White House through independent expenditures. But the Supreme Court decision left intact bans on corporate contributions to candidates, the New York Times explains.
The panel decision can be immediately appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court and is “almost certainly headed” there, SCOTUSblog says. The case is Republican National Committee v. Federal Election Commission.
In the second ruling, the en banc U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit struck down limits on contributions to independent advocacy groups. Steve Simpson of the Institute for Justice argued the case on behalf of the conservative advocacy group SpeechNow.org. He told the Washington Post that the decision was “a tremendous victory for free speech.”
However, the appeals panel said SpeechNow.org still had to organize as a political committee and make financial disclosures to the Federal Election Commission, according to The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times.
The SpeechNow ruling “significantly broadens the impact of Citizens United,” SCOTUSblog says, by extending its reasoning from campaign spending to campaign donations.
The Washington Post also notes the expansion of Citizens United. “The SpeechNow.org decision effectively expands the scope of a new, more freewheeling campaign-finance system emerging in the wake of January’s Citizens United decision,” the Post said. But the newspaper said the two cases together highlight the uncertainty surrounding campaign finance.
The second case is SpeechNow.org v. Federal Election Commission.
