US supreme court strikes down limits on campaign spending | US supreme court

One of the last remaining hurdles for wealthy donors sending unrestricted funds to federal political candidates has been lifted after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a lower court ruling that limited spending by political parties to support their candidates.

“A HUGE WIN FOR REPUBLICANS, and more importantly, the First Amendment!” wrote Donald Trump in a post on Truth Social.

The US Constitution’s first amendment protects free speech, and the Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that campaign spending is a form of expression.

National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Commission stems from a 2022 lawsuit filed by J.D. Vance, Republican former congressman Steve Chabot of Ohio, the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee challenging the Federal Election Commission’s enforcement of limits on so-called “coordinated party spending.”

The US supreme court has struck down restrictions on political donations and spending over the past two decades. The 2010 Citizens United v. FEC decision removed federal restrictions on corporate spending by independent groups influencing elections, and was followed by the McCutcheon v. FEC decision in 2014; This decision removed aggregate limits on how much an individual could contribute to all candidates and committees combined in an election cycle.

This has led to Super Pacs raising and spending unlimited amounts of money on campaigns, which is legal as long as there is no coordination between the organization and the candidate. Meanwhile, large contributions to joint fundraising committees allowed parties and candidates to raise funds together under their common limits.

Rep. Richard Hudson of North Carolina and Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, the chairmen of the Republican party’s campaign committees in their respective chambers, hailed Tuesday’s decision as a “major victory for the integrity” of the U.S. political system.

“The Supreme Court has made clear that the federal government has no authority to impose arbitrary limits on how political parties can support the candidates they nominate,” Hudson and Scott said. “By striking down these unconstitutional caps on coordinated spending, the court restored basic political discourse and ensured that parties could compete on a level playing field.”

Democratic leaders, by contrast, said the decision eliminated an important protection against election fraud.

“House and Senate Democratic candidates have consistently outperformed their Republican rivals, fueled by strong grassroots support from voters,” the Democratic National Committee wrote in a statement along with the Democratic Senate and House campaign committees. “The Republicans’ plan to overturn campaign finance law is a clear and obvious effort to rewrite the election rules to their advantage and get more money from billionaires to support their candidates.”

Campaign finance experts said Tuesday’s decision was the latest in a long trend.

“The decision was no surprise,” said Erin Chlopak, senior director of campaign finance at the Campaign Legal Center and a former senior attorney for the Federal Election Commission. “The fact that the court took up this case when there was already decided law relevant to the question before the high court was not a good sign to begin with. It was also not a good sign that the government chose not to defend its own law.”

Vance and the plaintiffs argued that limits on political party spending were unnecessary in the absence of meaningful restrictions from Super Pacs. In its current form, the law “severely restricts political party committees from doing what the first amendment gives them the right to do: fully cooperate with and advocate for their candidates for federal office.”

The Trump administration supported Vance’s lawsuit, leading the court to appoint an outside attorney to represent the FEC, which has lacked a quorum and been unable to initiate enforcement proceedings since April 2025. Arguing in support of the legislation, Roman Martinez argued that removing the restrictions effectively legalized gratuitous political corruption and that Vance’s claim was moot because the vice president “has repeatedly denied that he has any concrete plans to run in 2028.”

The decision undermines laws intended to prevent the creation of a slush fund of the kind that led to Richard Nixon’s Watergate scandal, according to Eric Petry, counsel for the Brennan Center’s Program on Elections and Government.

“This is yet another example of the court’s effort to destroy anti-corruption laws and undermine campaign finance laws in this country,” Petry said. “While the Court has recognized this truly radical and inaccurate interpretation of the First Amendment, it has been extremely hostile to any restrictions on campaign finance limits.”

Petry said the justices should not expect their decisions to lead to widespread evasion of campaign finance rules that continue to escalate. “We saw donors like Elon Musk spending a quarter of a billion dollars through their own Super Bundles during the 24th election cycle.”

He added that it’s unclear how much impact this decision will have because the current state of campaign finance regulation is deeply compromised.

A fully appointed Federal Election Commission has six members, with no more than three members from any political party. It cannot take major action such as opening an investigation, imposing fines or creating new rules without at least four members. It currently has two members, and Trump has refrained from appointing more.

Companies and rich people are pouring money into this gap, especially among tech firms that are facing public backlash over data center deployment and AI policy. “AI spending is already the biggest spending cycle, and they have a lot of money in their war chest,” Petry said. “This is going to be a big story over the next few months and moving forward.”