Supreme Court will review another campaign spending limit in challenge partly filed by JD Vance
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to consider a First Amendment challenge to a law limiting how much political parties can spend in coordination with candidates in federal elections. (Image from ShutterstocK)
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to consider a First Amendment challenge to a law limiting how much political parties can spend in coordination with candidates in federal elections.
The Supreme Court granted cert Monday in a challenge to the law by two Republican committees and two GOP politicians, including then-U.S. Senate candidate JD Vance of Ohio, who has since become the vice president, report Reuters, CNN and SCOTUSblog.
The en banc 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at Cincinnati had upheld the law last year, citing Federal Election Commission v. Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee, a 2001 Supreme Court decision upholding limits on coordinated spending.
The 6th Circuit majority said it was bound by the 2001 decision while acknowledging that the Supreme Court “has tightened” restrictions on campaign finance regulations in the 23 years that followed, the cert petition says.
The challengers argue that the decision known as Colorado II involved a facial challenge to a predecessor law. The new as-applied challenge to the revised law would allow the Supreme Court to reverse the 6th Circuit without reconsidering the Colorado II decision, the cert petition says.
“Yet if the court thinks Colorado II controls, it should overrule that outdated decision,” the cert petition says.
According to a June 30 press release from Public Citizen, a nonprofit consumer rights advocacy group, the coordinated spending limit was passed to “guard against the corrupting effect of large campaign contributions” flowing to candidates through party committees, circumventing limits on direct campaign contributions to candidates.
A June 30 press release from Common Cause, a nonprofit watchdog group, called the limits on coordinated spending “one of the few remaining pillars of campaign finance law.”
The Elias Law Group will defend the regulations on behalf of Democratic groups that intervened in the case, according to another June 30 press release. The Trump administration has sided with the challengers’ First Amendment arguments.
The case is National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Commission. The SCOTUSblog case page is here.
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