Posted on 06/30/2025 11:18:14 AM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
The court's 2010 Citizens United decision opened the door to unlimited independent spending in federal elections.
The Supreme Court will take up a Republican-led drive, backed by President Donald Trump's administration, to wipe away limits on how much political parties can spend in coordination with candidates for Congress and president.
The justices said Monday they will review an appellate ruling that upheld a provision of federal election law that is more than 50 years old, ignoring pleas from Democrats to leave the law in place. The Supreme Court itself upheld it in 2001.
But since Chief Justice John Roberts joined the court in 2005, a conservative majority has upended a variety of congressionally enacted limits on raising and spending money to influence elections. The court's 2010 Citizens United decision opened the door to unlimited independent spending in federal elections.
Without the limits on party spending, large donors would be able to skirt caps on individual contributions to a candidate by directing unlimited sums to the party with the understanding that the money will be spent on behalf of the candidate, supporters of the law say.
The case will be argued in the fall.
Richard Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California at Los Angeles law school, has predicted the court will strike down the limits. “That may even make sense now in light of the prevalence of super PAC spending that has undermined political parties and done nothing to limit (and in fact increased) corruption and inequality,” Hasen wrote on the Election Law blog.
The Justice Department almost always defends federal laws when they are challenged in court. But the Trump administration notified the court that “this is the rare case that warrants an exception to that general approach” because it believes the law violates free-speech protections in...
(Excerpt) Read more at scrippsnews.com ...
Am I reading this wrong? Sounds like a plan to buy politicians to me.
It’s already in play aka dark money under bogus names democrats most guilty.
Biden won huh.
Yup. Billionaires and NGO’s funnel money to politicians and buy votes. We need less of that and not more if we want candidates that the people actually want.
It IS.
I agree with lifting the caps for several reasons.
1) Caps limit free speech.
2) Caps increase the incentive to find alternative, read illegal, methods for supporting candidates.
3) Raising money doesn’t equal winning, as David Brat, Donald Trump and others have proven.
4) I fully support allowing fools to light their money on fire supporting Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris or any other buffoon who has no chance of winning.
there should only be one election spending law- FULL DISCLOSURE.
Anyone can spend anything they want, but it must be publicly disclosed and auditable.
If I recall, Kamala spent one Billion dollars on her campaign. How much higher do they want to go?
I’d put the limit on donated money to not exceed the annual salary of the position. It’s absurd for a candidate to spend 1 billion dollars for a 400K job.
Sounds good but the power players would find or make a loop hole to get around it politics is one of the dirtiest games around.
That’s for sure.
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