The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments Tuesday in a GOP-led challenge arguing that federal limits on coordinated spending between political parties and candidates violate the First Amendment.
The case involves Vice President JD Vance, who joined two Republican committees in bringing the lawsuit while running for the U.S. Senate in Ohio. President Trump’s administration has backed the challenge, which contends that coordinated spending caps amount to unconstitutional restrictions on political speech. The challengers are appealing a lower court decision that upheld federal limits on how much parties can spend in coordination with the candidates they support.
“The coordinated party spending limits are at war with this court’s recent First Amendment cases,” Noel Francisco, a lawyer for the Republican challengers, told the justices during the arguments. “The theory is that they’re needed to prevent an individual donor from laundering a $44,000 donation through the party to a particular candidate in exchange for official action. But that Rube Goldberg theory fails for the same reasons this court rejected it”
Francisco cited a 2014 case that struck down limits on the total amount an individual could spend on federal political contributions, also on First Amendment grounds.
The Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 limits how much a candidate can spend to prevent corruption. Party spending that is not coordinated with a campaign counts as an “independent expenditure” and isn’t subject to a cap, but coordinated spending is restricted. Because the Federal Election Commission under Trump declined to defend the challenged provision, the Court appointed attorney Roman Martinez to argue in favor of the provision. Three Democratic groups — Democratic National Committee, Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee — were also allowed to intervene to defend the lower court’s ruling.
Martinez argued in court filings that without these limits, “common sense and history show that donors will often use political parties as conduits” to evade individual contribution caps, heightening the risk of quid pro quo corruption.
“The strategy is simple: A donor maxes out his contributions to a candidate, then routes additional money to the candidate by giving to the party, which uses that money to pay the candidate’s expenses,” he wrote.
The Dennis Michael Lynch Podcast archive is available below, with the most recent on top. Never miss an episode. Subscribe to the show by downloading The DML News App or go to Apple Podcasts.
