Supreme
Court Rejects First Amendment Challenge to Party Spending Limits
In
a very close decision, the United States Supreme Court ruled 5-4
to uphold party limits on coordinated expenditures. Justice Souter,
joined by Justices Stevens, OConnor, Ginsburg and Breyer,
wrote for the majority. In
Federal Election Commission v. Colorado Republican Federal
Campaign Committee (No. 00-191), the Court rejected
the partys facial challenge to the limits on its coordinated
expenditures. The Court found that limiting coordinated spending
by a party does not impose a unique First Amendment burden on parties
and that coordinated expenditures of unlimited money donated to
a party dilute and therefore undermine the contribution limits.
This
ruling comes 15 years after the Supreme Court found in an earlier
version of the same case that independent expenditure limits on
political parties were unconstitutional as applied. The Court remanded
the partys broader claim that all expenditures, including
coordinated ones, are facially unconstitutional and thus invalid.
The partys claims were successful on remand and the 10th
Circuit affirmed.
In
reversing the lower courts, the Supreme Court found unpersuasive
the partys argument that the First Amendment is implicated
to its fullest when a political partys ability to finance
its own political speech, either through independent or coordinated
expenditures, is restricted. The Court was persuaded by the governments
position that unlimited coordinated spending raises the risk of
corruption, including the appearance of such, through sidestepping
the existing contribution limits.
Justice
Clarence Thomas, joined by Justices Scalia and Kennedy and in part
by Justice Rehnquist, dissented on grounds that the party coordinated
spending limit "sweeps too broadly, interferes with the party-candidate
relationship, and has not been proved necessary to combat corruption
. . .." Justice Thomas even goes so far as to appropriately
call for the overruling of the Courts seminal 1976 decision
in Buckley v. Valeo, which held that contribution limits
were okay but expenditure limits violated First Amendment principles.
The
significance of this ruling on current Congressional efforts to
further tread on First Amendment rights applicable to campaign finance
is uncertain. The decision does not deal directly with "soft
money" contributions, but the Court does aptly note that "we
have routinely struck down limitations on independent expenditures
by candidates, other individuals, and groups . . .." In a paper,
titled "Campaign Finance and the First Amendment", the
Center for Individual Freedom discusses several major aspects of
current proposed legislation that run afoul of First Amendment principles
applicable to campaign finance. To download a copy of the paper,
please click
here.
For
a copy of the Supreme Courts decision in Federal Election
Commission v. Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee, click
here.
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