(AFP) – The US Supreme Court on Tuesday lifted restrictions on the amount of money political parties can spend in coordination with individual candidates, in a case that could impact November’s midterm elections. The conservative-dominated top court ruled 6-3 that the limits on coordinated campaign spending violate the First Amendment to the US Constitution, which guarantees free speech rights.
The case was brought by President Donald Trump’s Republican Party, which stands to potentially benefit more from the easing of the campaign finance restrictions than Democrats. Trump welcomed the decision in a Truth Social post. “The Supreme Court just took restrictions off political spending!” he said. “A big win for Republicans and, more importantly, The First Amendment!”
The six conservative justices on the Supreme Court, including the three nominated by Trump, joined the majority opinion authored by Justice Brett Kavanaugh while the three liberals dissented. At issue in the case were limits on the amount of money political parties can spend to support individual candidates under the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA). In Citizens United, a landmark 2010 case, the Supreme Court lifted restrictions on campaign spending by corporations, unions and other outside groups. But political parties were still restricted on how much they could spend on advertising, for example, in coordination with individual candidates.
Supporters of the law argued that it curbs potential corruption and prevents wealthy donors from funneling money through a political party to a candidate of their choice. In his ruling, Kavanaugh said the campaign spending restrictions constituted a “severe infringement on First Amendment-protected political speech.” “Whether the Democratic party, the Republican party, or other parties, all political parties and candidates going forward can compete equally under the same rules regarding coordinated expenditures,” Kavanaugh said.
Senate Democratic minority leader Chuck Schumer condemned the court’s ruling. “Trump’s MAGA Supreme Court just gave the very wealthy and big-money special interest groups the green light to buy elections,” Schumer said in a statement. “Today’s decision eviscerates one of the last fragile guardrails on coordinated political spending and will unleash a new arms race of campaign spending, bringing in even more special interest money to our elections.”
Among those bringing the case was Vice President JD Vance, who joined when he was running for the Senate in 2022 and is now considered a potential candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2028.
© 2024 AFP
