Supreme Court Agrees to Rehear Case Seeking End to Campaign Finance Limits

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court agreed Monday to hear a lawsuit during its next term that seeks to end some restrictions on campaign spending by political parties.

The limits were imposed during the Nixon administration to prevent political parties from coordinating efforts with candidates on how campaign advertising money is spent.

The law included restrictions on donations from special interest groups trying to elect their favored candidates. The limits have been upheld by a federal court.

The Federal Election Commission varies the limits year-by-year and between states, depending on their populations.

This year, the limits can be as high as $3.9 million for Senate candidates and $127,000 for U.S. House candidates in states with one representative. In other states, the limit is $63,600 per House candidate.

The Republican-led lawsuit that will now be heard by the Supreme Court calls the restrictions a violation of First Amendment rights to free speech.

“A political party exists to get its candidates elected,” says a legal brief from the National Republican Senatorial Committee. The brief was part of the committee’s plea asking the Supreme Court to hear the lawsuit against the Federal Election Commission.

“Yet Congress has severely restricted how much parties can spend on their own campaign advertising if done in cooperation with those very candidates,” the brief says.

The case could transform campaign financing as well as increase the influence of political parties in helping candidates appeal to voters. Republicans tend to count large corporate interests as their biggest supporters.

The finance restrictions are found in the Federal Election Campaign Act. It was signed into law by President Richard Nixon in 1972 and amended in 1974.

The restrictions on coordinated efforts between political parties and candidates, as well as limits on private donations, were intended to prevent corruption. Most commonly the corruption allowed corporations or special interest groups to control politicians to push their own agendas.

Some politicians were accused of awarding patronage jobs to representatives of the special interests.

The lawsuit to end the restrictions was originally filed by now Vice President JD Vance while he was running for the Senate to represent Ohio along with Steve Chabot, an Ohio congressman. It was joined and has been taken over by the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee.

It is opposed by the Democratic National Committee. Its Supreme Court brief said that “the [Federal Election Campaign] Act’s cap on coordinated expenditures seems a small price to pay to preserve the integrity of our system of representative democracy.”

Removing restrictions on donations and political party influence would undermine the law’s goal of regulating “election-related fundraising and spending with the aim of preventing corruption,” the Democrats’ brief says.

So far, federal courts have upheld Federal Election Campaign Act restrictions.

In the 2001 decision of Federal Election Commission v. Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee, the Supreme Court said the law prevents the undue influence of the wealthiest campaign contributors.

Without the restrictions, contributors could donate to political parties with instructions to route the money to their preferred candidates, the Supreme Court said.

Democratic groups pledged to continue their defense of the Federal Election Campaign Act finance limits after the Supreme Court announced Monday it would take up the Republicans’ latest lawsuit.

A joint statement from several Democratic groups said they would “fight back against the Republican attempt to sow chaos and fundamentally upend our campaign finance system, which would return us to the pre-Watergate era of campaign finance.”

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