New York Times

Supreme Court Strikes Down Overall Political Donation Cap

By ADAM LIPTAK APRIL 2, 2014

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Wednesday continued its abolition of
limits on election spending, striking down a decades-old cap on the total amount
any individual can contribute to federal candidates in a two-year election cycle.

The ruling, issued near the start of a campaign season, will very likely
increase the role money plays in American politics.

The 5-to-4 decision, with the court’s more conservative members in the
majority, echoed Citizens United, the 2010 decision that struck down limits on
independent campaign spending by corporations and unions.

Wednesday’s decision seemed to alter campaign finance law in subtle but
important ways, notably by limiting how the government can justify laws said to
restrict the exercise of First Amendment rights in the form of campaign
contributions.

The court’s 88-page decision reflected sharply different visions of the
meaning of the First Amendment and the role of government in regulating
elections, with the majority deeply skeptical of government efforts to control
participation in politics, and the minority saying that such oversight was needed
to ensure a functioning democracy.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing for four justices in the controlling
opinion, said the overall limits could not survive First Amendment scrutiny.

“There is no right in our democracy more basic,” he wrote, “than the right to
participate in electing our political leaders.”

In a dissent from the bench, Justice Stephen G. Breyer called the majority
opinion a disturbing development that raised the overall contribution ceiling to
“the number infinity.”

“If the court in Citizens United opened a door,” he said, “today’s decision
may well open a floodgate.”

Such oral dissents are rare, and they signal deep disagreements. But Chief
Justice Roberts and Justice Breyer noted from the bench that the other side’s
arguments were well presented.

Wednesday’s decision did not affect familiar base limits on contributions
from individuals to candidates, currently $2,600 per candidate in primary and
general elections. But it said that overall limits of $48,600 by individuals every
two years for contributions to all federal candidates violated the First
Amendment, as did separate aggregate limits on contributions to political party
committees, currently $74,600.

In his written opinion, Justice Breyer said Wednesday’s decision would
allow “a single individual to contribute millions of dollars to a political party or
to a candidate’s campaign.” He was joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg,
Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

The ruling, which goes in effect in a matter of weeks, concerned only
contributions from individuals. Federal law continues to ban direct
contributions by corporations and unions, though they remain free to spend
unlimited sums through “super PACs” and similar vehicles.

The case, McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, No. 12-536, was
brought by Shaun McCutcheon, an Alabama businessman, and the Republican
National Committee. Mr. McCutcheon, who had contributed a total of about
$33,000 to 16 candidates for federal office in the 2012 election cycle, said he had
wanted to give $1,776 each to 12 more but was stopped by the overall cap for
individuals. The party committee said it wanted to receive contributions above
the legal limit for political committees.

In an interview last fall, Mr. McCutcheon said his goal was to encourage the
adoption of conservative principles. “To me,” he said, “being a conservative
means smaller government and more freedom.”

Chief Justice Roberts said the core purpose of the First Amendment was to
protect political speech from government interference, even if many people
might welcome it.

“They would be delighted to see fewer television commercials touting a
candidate’s accomplishments or disparaging an opponent’s character,” he wrote.

“Money in politics may at times seem repugnant to some, but so, too, does much
of what the First Amendment vigorously protects. If the First Amendment
protects flag burning, funeral protests and Nazi parades — despite the profound
offense such spectacles cause — it surely protects political campaign speech
despite popular opposition.”

The decision chipped away at the central distinction drawn in Buckley v.
Valeo, the court’s seminal 1976 campaign finance decision. Independent
spending, the court said in Buckley, is political speech protected by the First
Amendment. But contributions may be capped, the court said then, in the name
of preventing corruption. The court added in passing that aggregate
contribution limits were a “quite modest restraint upon protected political
activity” that “serves to prevent evasion” of the base limits.

Chief Justice Roberts said that brief passage on overall limits had to be
reconsidered in light of regulatory developments and other factors. But he added
that the Buckley decision’s general structure remained intact. “We see no need,”
he said, “to revisit Buckley’s distinction between contributions and
expenditures.”

The chief justice said that while the $2,600 base limits were also intact, the
overall caps placed an unacceptable burden on “an individual’s right to
participate in the public debate through political expression and political
association.”

“The government may no more restrict how many candidates or causes a
donor may support than it may tell a newspaper how many candidates it may
endorse,” he wrote.

Leveling the playing field is not an acceptable interest for the government,
Chief Justice Roberts said. Nor is “the possibility that an individual who spends
large sums may garner ‘influence over or access to’ elected officials or political
parties,” he added, quoting Citizens United.

The only acceptable justification, he said, was rooting out “quid pro quo
corruption” or the appearance of it.

Justice Breyer said that analysis was too narrow. “The anticorruption
interest that drives Congress to regulate campaign contributions is a far broader,
more important interest than the plurality acknowledges,” he wrote. “It is an
interest in maintaining the integrity of our public governmental institutions.”

“Where enough money calls the tune,” he wrote, “the general public will not
be heard.”

The Roberts court has been consistently hostile to campaign finance limits.
In a half-dozen earlier cases, the five more conservative justices have voted
together, though Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. have
sometimes taken a more incremental approach than the bolder one called for by

Justices Anthony M. Kennedy, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.
Wednesday’s decision is likely to increase overall campaign spending, but it
may also rechannel some of it away from super PACs and toward candidates and
parties.

“The existing aggregate limits may in fact encourage the movement of
money away from entities subject to disclosure,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote.
“Because individuals’ direct contributions are limited, would-be donors may
turn to other avenues for political speech.” He was joined by Justices Alito,

Kennedy and Scalia. Justice Thomas wrote a concurring opinion.

The main opinions spent many pages arguing over the possibility that the
basic limits could be circumvented without the overall caps. Justice Breyer gave
detailed examples, which Chief Justice Roberts dismissed as speculative and
highly implausible. The chief justice added that Congress could address some
perceived loopholes through earmark requirements, transfer restrictions,
segregated accounts and mandated disclosure, though he did not say that those
efforts would pass constitutional muster.

Justice Breyer said there was little hope that regulators would vigorously
enforce even the existing limits.

More broadly, he said the decision was one “that substitutes judges’
understandings of how the political process works for the understanding of

Congress; that fails to recognize the difference between influence resting upon
public opinion and influence bought by money alone; that overturns key
precedent; that creates huge loopholes in the law; and that undermines, perhaps
devastates, what remains of campaign finance reform.”

A version of this article appears in print on April 3, 2014, on page A1 of the New York edition with the
headline: Justices, 5-4, Void Key Spending Cap in Political Races.