With its last opinion on the last day of the term, the Supreme Court brought things back to constitutional basics by striking down a state law that punished political speech. Whatever the motivations behind Arizona’s so-called Clean Elections Act, giving a publicly funded candidate more taxpayer-provided money every time his privately funded opponent—or his supporters—have “spoken too much” clearly chills speech. In elections, where there is no effective speech without spending money, matching funds provisions triggered by speech fail First Amendment scrutiny.

And this result should’ve been obvious to the entire Court, not just a five-justice majority, in the wake of the Davis v. FEC “Millionaires’ Amendment” case from 2008. Davis struck down the part of McCain-Feingold in which spending by individually wealthy candidates triggered increased contribution limits for their opponents. If the mere possibility of your opponent getting more money is unconstitutional, then the guarantee that your opponent will get more money—as was the case under the Arizona law—is even more so.

Allowing the government to burden political speech in this fashion not only diminishes the quality of political debate, but ignores the fundamental principle upon which the First Amendment is premised: that the government cannot be trusted to regulate political speech for the public benefit. Moreover, the state cannot condition the exercise of the right to speak on the promotion of a viewpoint contrary to the speaker’s.

Here’s Cato’s brief in the case, Arizona Free Enterprise Club’s Freedom Club PAC v. Bennett.

Over the next few years, most arguments about campaign finance regulation will be about extending mandated disclosure to some of the independent spending freed up by the Citizens United decision.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, James L. Huffman offers a unique perspective on mandated disclosure: he was a candidate for the U.S. Senate last year. He argues that mandated disclosure means incumbents know who funded the campaigns of their challengers.  Incumbents do not have to actually threaten anyone; disclosure plus circumstances means a cautious businessperson will stay clear of electoral participation. Huffman also claims that some people who might have contributed to his campaign heard from associates of his opponent who said contributing to Huffman might be a bad idea.

We have heard such testimony before about the malign effects of disclosure. George Soros said some potential contributors to his efforts to unseat former President George W. Bush stayed on the sidelines because of concerns about publicity (see James V. Grimaldi and Thomas B. Edsall, “Super Rich Step Into Political Vacuum; McCain-Feingold Paved Way for 527s” The Washington Post, October 17, 2004).  Now we have a Senate candidate citing “dozens” of examples of a similar chilling of political speech.

Some might think incumbent protection is no longer a problem since 69 House seats changed hands in 2010 (and a similar number in the two previous House elections). If you think that, please recall that the House has 435 seats, all of which could potentially change hands. Yes, the advantages of incumbency have become somewhat smaller in recent years. But those advantages remain significant, and disclosure does increase the risk of contributing to a challenger, especially when the odds are overwhelming that those now in office will win re-election.

What should be done? Huffman notes that many Americans consider mandated disclosure to be all benefits and no costs. We might begin by gaining a more realistic view of the disclosure calculus. That more realistic view should include the costs of disclosure including lower participation and the ways mandated disclosure make public debates more irrational. At a minimum, existing disclosure thresholds should be dramatically raised. Forcing disclosure of the names of those who contribute less than $1,000 serves no public purpose.

We also should not mandate disclosure of the names of those who support speech independently of candidates and the parties. The only justification for such a mandate would be educating the voters. In other words, voters are thought to look for cues about who to vote for by considering who spends money on speech favoring a candidate. Does that seem plausible? If not, forced disclosure of independent spenders would not be constitutional. If Congress nonetheless enacts disclosure for independent spending, the U.S. Supreme Court should rigorously consider both the end served by such laws and the relationship between the means of disclosure to that end. Does disclosure of independent spending really educate any voters? If so, what about the costs to free speech identified by Professor Huffman? Once we set aside conventional pieties, does forcing people to tell government officials about their political activities really offer much to nation? Or does such coercion do little more than indulge those who equate politics with the pleasures of preaching hatred of those they despise?

Last year I wrote a Cato policy analysis of the justifications for disclosure after Citizens United.

The Supreme Court majority in Citizens United asserted plainly that the federal government’s powers are few and defined in the realm of political speech. The decision has since been cast as one that does little more than give “corporations and unions the freedom to spend as much as they like to support or attack candidates.” Of course, the stakes were far higher. As the government’s attorney asserted during the initial oral argument, the Federal Election Commission retained the authority to ban the sale of certain books (e-books included) in the weeks leading up to an election, a fact opponents of Citizens United rarely mention.

Shortly after that oral argument, Austin Bragg and I made a short video with Steve Simpson of the Institute for Justice, Allison Hayward of George Mason University School of Law (and now of the Center for Competitive Politics) and John Samples, director of the Center for Representative Government at the Cato Institute.