Another Campaign Restriction Falls Because First Amendment Strongly Protects Political Speech
Despite the 5–4 split among the justices, McCutcheon is an easy case if you apply well‐settled law: Restrictions on the total amount an individual may donate to candidates and party committees—as opposed to how much he can donate to any one candidate—violate the First Amendment because they do not prevent quid pro quo corruption or the appearance thereof. That corruption‐prevention rationale is the only government interest that the Supreme Court accepts as a valid one for restricting political‐campaign activities. As Chief Justice Roberts wrote for the majority (and it is a majority because Justice Thomas concurs in the judgment): “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.”
With Justice Thomas, however, I would go beyond that simple point and overrule Buckley v. Valeo (1976) altogether because “[c]ontributions and expenditures are simply ‘two sides of the same First Amendment coin’” and the Court’s “efforts to distinguish the two have produced mere ‘word games’ rather than any cognizable principle of constitutional law” (quoting Chief Justice Burger’s partial dissent in Buckley). Buckley rewrote the speech‐restrictive post‐Watergate campaign‐finance law into something no Congress would’ve passed, also inventing legal standards such that one type of political speech has greater First Amendment protection than another. Nearly 20 years later, the Supreme Court rewrote another congressional attempt (McCain‐Feingold) to “reform” the rules by which people run for office, shying away from striking down Buckley and producing a convoluted mish‐mash opinion that serves nobody’s interest. Enough! The drip‐drip of campaign‐finance rulings over the last decade has shown, existing campaign‐finance law is as unworkable as it is unconstitutional.
As Cato argued in its amicus brief, in a truly free society, people should be able to give whatever they want to whomever they choose, including candidates for public office. The Supreme Court today correctly struck down the biennial campaign contribution limits and gave those who contribute money to candidates and parties as much freedom as those who spend independently to promote campaigns and causes. But it should have gone further.
