Supreme Court Strikes Down Party-Candidate Campaign-Spending Limits
Republicans, including the vice president, filed the case.
Political parties can coordinate unlimited spending with their federal candidates after the Supreme Court struck down federal statutory limits Tuesday.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh, writing for the court’s conservative majority in National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Commission, said the Federal Election Campaign Act’s restrictions on coordinated party expenditures unlawfully burden political speech.
The decision reverses the court’s 2001 ruling in Federal Election Commission v. Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee, known as Colorado II, which had upheld the restraints as a way to prevent donors from using political parties to evade limits on direct contributions to candidates.
The ruling leaves intact federal limits on direct contributions from individuals to candidates.
“As the name implies, a political party’s coordinated expenditures are the party’s expenditures on, for example, advertisements produced or distributed in consultation with a candidate’s campaign,” Mr. Kavanaugh wrote.
The limits varied by office and state. Under figures cited by the court, national party committees could spend between $130,600 and $4.07 million in coordination with an individual Senate candidate and between $65,300 and $130,600 with an individual House candidate. In the most recent presidential election, a national party committee could spend $32.39 million in coordination with its presidential nominee.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee, the National Republican Congressional Committee, then-Senate candidate JD Vance and then-congressman Steve Chabot filed the case in 2022. They argued the coordinated-expenditure limits violate the First Amendment and later campaign-finance rulings undermined Colorado II. The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the challenge, saying it was bound by Colorado II.
Mr. Kavanaugh said more recent decisions, including McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission and Federal Election Commission v. Ted Cruz for Senate, narrowed the government’s ability to restrict campaign spending. The government may target quid pro quo corruption or its appearance, he said, but not broader concerns: “the Government’s desire to prevent or reduce influence, ingratiation, gratitude, access, or the like for those who spend in support of, or contribute to, political parties or candidates is not a constitutionally permissible objective for campaign finance restrictions.”
The opinion also said disclosure and earmarking rules remain available to prevent donors from routing money improperly to candidates. Parties have lost ground to super PACs and other outside groups, it said, noting political-action committees raised more than $15.7 billion in the 2024 cycle compared with $2.7 billion by political parties.
“Importantly, by holding FECA’s political-party coordinated-expenditure restrictions unconstitutional, the Court’s decision today treats all political parties equally,” Mr. Kavanaugh wrote. “It will allow all political parties — including the DNC and RNC and the respective Senate and House campaign committees, as well as other parties and party committees — to participate more freely and compete more fully in the political process, and to coordinate more closely with their candidates.”
Justice Elena Kagan dissented, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson. She said the ruling weakens contribution limits by allowing donors to use political parties as conduits for much larger candidate-directed spending. “A contribution limit of $7,000 will do no good if a donor can use a political party as a conduit to give the candidate hundreds of thousands more,” she wrote.
Ms. Kagan said the court had discarded settled law based on “a new majority’s new outlook” on campaign finance and compared the ruling to earlier decisions that loosened restrictions on political spending, including Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.
“For those who think there is too much of it in this country — for those who would prefer even more money to be pumped even more easily into politics despite the danger of corruption — this overruling is for you,” she wrote.
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