New York Times

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that states may prohibit judicial candidates from personally asking their supporters for campaign contributions. The vote was 5 to 4, with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. joining the court’s four-member liberal wing to form a majority.

“A state’s decision to elect judges does not compel it to compromise public confidence in their integrity,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote.

In dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia said the decision was a disguised attack on judicial elections that “flattens one settled First Amendment principle after another.”

The decision effectively upheld measures in 30 states that forbid judicial candidates to make personal appeals for money. Such solicitations, the states say, threaten the integrity of the judiciary and public confidence in the judicial system.

Supreme Court justices, like other federal judges, are appointed for life and are meant to be insulated from politics. But judges in 39 states face elections that are often awash in money, creating a tension between accountability and independence. Their contributors often appear before them, and some studies have found that elected state Supreme Court judges tend to vote in favor of their contributors.

The Supreme Court has struggled with how much leeway to grant states in regulating judicial elections. In a 2002 decision, it allowed judges running for office to take stands on political and legal issues. But in 2009, it required the chief justice of the West Virginia Supreme Court to recuse himself from a case over $3 million of campaign spending on his behalf by an interested party.

Wednesday’s decision stressed that judicial elections are different. “Judges are not politicians,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote, “even when they come to the bench by way of the ballot.”

The case, Williams-Yulee v. Florida Bar, No. 13-1499, concerned Lanell Williams-Yulee, who lost a race for a seat on the county court in Hillsborough County, Fla., which includes Tampa. She was reprimanded and made to pay $1,860 in court costs for signing a fund-raising letter.

The Florida Supreme Court upheld the penalties and the state’s solicitation ban, saying it helped “ensure that judges engaged in campaign activities are able to maintain their status as fair and impartial arbiters of the law.”

Wednesday’s ruling affirmed that decision even as it acknowledged that important First Amendment interests were at stake. “Speech about public issues and the qualifications of candidates for elected office commands the highest level of First Amendment protection,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote.

Even so, he said, this was “one of the rare cases in which a speech restriction withstands strict scrutiny.”

The states’ interests in protecting judicial integrity and public confidence were compelling ones, he wrote. “Judges, charged with exercising strict neutrality and independence,” he said, “cannot supplicate campaign donors without diminishing public confidence in judicial integrity.

Chief Justice Roberts dismissed concerns about the porousness of the Florida ban. It allows judicial candidates to make campaign appearances where others ask for money, to know who has contributed and to express gratitude. Under Wednesday’s ruling, then, judicial candidates can say thank you, but they may not say please.

“Solicitation by the candidate personally creates a categorically different and more severe risk,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote.

“In any event,” he added, “Florida can ban personal solicitation of campaign funds by judicial candidates without making them obey a comprehensive code to leading an ethical life.”

Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan joined all of the chief justice’s opinion, and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg most of it.

In a concurrence, Justice Ginsburg collected evidence suggesting that campaign spending has hurt the independence of elected judges.

“When the political campaign-finance apparatus is applied to judicial elections, the distinction of judges from politicians dims,” she wrote. “Donors, who gain audience and influence through contributions to political campaigns, anticipate that investment in campaigns for judicial office will yield similar returns. Elected judges understand this dynamic.”

Chief Justice Roberts’s majority opinion drew cutting dissents from his usual allies in campaign finance cases: Justices Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. Chief Justice Roberts suggested that parts of those opinions were a little over the top.

“A reader of Justice Kennedy’s dissent,” the chief justice wrote, “could be forgiven for concluding that the court has just upheld a latter-day version of the Alien and Sedition Acts.”

Justice Kennedy wrote that the majority had censored Ms. Williams-Yulee’s speech.

“Whether an election is the best way to choose a judge is itself the subject of fair debate,” he wrote. “But once the people of a state choose to have elections, the First Amendment protects the candidate’s right to speak and the public’s ensuing right to open and robust debate.”

In a second dissent, Justice Alito called Florida’s approach “about as narrowly tailored as a burlap bag.”

“It applies to requests for contributions in any amount,” he wrote, “and it applies even if the person solicited is not a lawyer, has never had any interest at stake in any case in the court in question, and has no prospect of ever having any interest at stake in any litigation in that court.”

Justice Scalia gave another example: Ms. Williams-Yulee, he wrote, “may not call up an old friend, a cousin, or even her parents to ask for a donation to her campaign.”

Chief Justice Roberts’s opinion said it took no position on the “enduring debate” over “the desirability of judicial elections,” which are a distinctively American practice.

Justice Scalia said the chief justice was not being candid.

“The court tries to strike a pose of neutrality between appointment and election of judges, but no one should be deceived,” Justice Scalia wrote. “A court that sees impropriety in a candidate’s request for any contributions to his election campaign does not much like judicial selection by the people.”

“The First Amendment,” Justice Scalia said, “is not abridged for the benefit of the Brotherhood of the Robe.”