Supreme Court to consider limits on individual political contributions

[Valin]

Washington Post:

Robert Barnes

February 19 2013

 

The Supreme Court reentered the controversial field of campaign finance Tuesday, agreeing to consider a Republican challenge to decades-old limits on the total amount a person can contribute to candidates, political parties and political action committees.

 

It is the court’s first major campaign finance case since its 2010 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which allowed unlimited corporate and union spending in elections. By extension, the decision led to the creation of super PACs, whose multimillion-dollar donations transformed funding of the 2012 presidential contest.

 

The new case, which will be heard in the court’s term that begins in October, concerns the federal limit on the amount an individual can contribute to certain campaigns during each election cycle.

 

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[Valin]

The Next Showdown on Campaign Finance

Richard Epstein

2.20/13

 

The decision of the United States Supreme Court to review the decision of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, McCutcheon v. FEC, may signal a serious shift in direction of the troubled law on campaign contributions.

 

The basic distinction dates back to Buckley v. Valeo, in which the court struck down limitations on the ability of individuals to spend their own money, but backed limitations on the contributions that could be made to political campaigns. The line for the distinction has been tenacious in practice, but relatively difficult to defend in theory. Any ordinary notion of freedom of speech would allow individuals to contribute dollars to support the speech of others, a point that was one prong in the important Supreme Court decision in the much-mooted decision of Citizens United v. FEC.

 

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As Adam Liptak reports, McCutcheon wanted to make collective contributions in excess of those amounts, but his challenge was rebuffed by a unanimous panel (in an opinion written by the prominent conservative jurist Janice Rogers Brown) that registered a commendable reluctance to wade into areas that are settled by Supreme Court decision. Brown rightly brushed aside the argument that these limitations should be regarded as expenditure limits and not contribution limits, and also noted that the argument for controlling corruption is the only one that has carried weight in limiting what everyone regards as a fundamental speech right.

 

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