Justices poised to strike down Watergate-era campaign finance limits

WASHINGTON— Supreme Court conservatives signaled Tuesday they will rule for Republicans and President Trump by lifting Watergate-era limits on campaign financing by political parties.

The court has repeatedly said that campaign money is protected as free speech and that the new ruling could allow parties to support their candidates’ campaigns with the help of wealthy donors.

For the second day in a row, Trump administration lawyers urged judges to strike down a law passed by Congress. And they appear to have the support of most conservatives.

The only doubt arose on the question of whether the case was flawed because no current candidate had pushed the envelope.

“The parties are very weakened,” Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh said. “This court’s decisions over the years have diminished the power of political parties compared to outside groups and have had negative impacts on our constitutional democracy.”

He was referring to decisions approving unlimited campaign spending by wealthy donors and so-called super PACs.

In the 2010 Citizens United case, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and four other conservatives lifted longstanding limits on campaign spending, including by corporations and unions. They did so on the theory that such expenditures were “independent” of the candidates and protected as free speech under the 1st Amendment.

Contribution limits to candidates are unaffected, they said. These restrictions may be justified because of the danger of corruption, where money buys political privilege. This triggered a new era of ever-increasing political spending, but most of this spending was separate from candidates and parties.

Last year, billionaire Elon Musk spent more than $250 million supporting Donald Trump’s re-election campaign. He did this with money spent through political action committees, not directly to Trump or his campaign.

Campaign finance laws, meanwhile, limit contributions to candidates to $3,500.

Lawyers for the National Republican Senatorial Committee noted this trend and told the Supreme Court that its decisions “erode” the foundation of some of the restrictions on campaign finance that remained in the 1970s.

At issue Tuesday were limits on “coordinated party spending.” Following the Watergate scandal, Congress placed limits on campaign money that could be given to parties and used to fund their candidates. The current donation limit is $44,000, attorneys said.

Washington attorney Noel Francisco, Trump’s first-term attorney general, asked the court to strike down those limits on the grounds that they were outdated and violated free speech.

“The theory is they are needed to prevent an individual donor from laundering a $44,000 donation through the party to a particular candidate in exchange for official action,” he said.

If a big-money donor hopes to win the favor of a congressional candidate, “the person looking to bribe would be better off donating a large amount to the candidate’s favorite super PAC,” Francisco said.

The lawsuit heard Tuesday was filed by then-Sen. He served under J.D. Vance of Ohio and other Republican candidates, and will continue his term as vice president and possibly presidential candidate in 2028.

The Justice Department usually defends federal laws, but in this case the Trump administration switched sides and joined Republicans in calling for lower party spending limits.

Past events may have prevented this.

In 2001, the Supreme Court narrowly upheld these restrictions on the grounds that the party’s direct support was a contribution and not an independent expenditure. But assistant attorney general Sarah Harris told the justices on Tuesday that the court’s recent decisions “shattered” those precedents.

“Parties cannot corrupt candidates, and there is no evidence to suggest that donors launder bribes by coordinating parties’ spending with candidates,” he said.

Marc Elias, a Democratic lawyer, joined the lawsuit in support of the court limits. The outcome will have little to do with the speech or campaign messages, he said.

“I think we’re highlighting the real corruption that can occur,” he said. If a person gives $1 million to a political party while having a business issue before the House or Senate, that could influence the “decisive or deciding vote,” he said.

The only apparent difficulty for the conservative justices concerned procedural issues.

Washington attorney Roman Martinez was asked to defend the legislation, and he argued that neither Vance nor other Republicans had the legal standing to challenge the limits. Vance was not a current candidate and therefore the case should be dismissed, he said.

Some legal observers noted that the restrictions on parties emerged in response to evidence that large campaign contributions to President Nixon’s re-election came from industry donors seeking government help.

“Coordinated spending limits are one of the few remaining checks to limit the influence of wealthy special interests in our elections,” said Omar Noureldin, Common Cause’s senior vice president of litigation. “If the Supreme Court strikes them down, party leaders and wealthy donors will be free to funnel nearly unlimited money directly into federal campaigns—exactly the kind of corruption these rules were created to stop.”

Daniel I. Weiner, an election law expert at the Brennan Center, said the justices are well aware of how far down those limits could set the stage for further challenges.

“I was surprised that both sides had to acknowledge that this case should not be considered in isolation, but as part of a decades-long effort to subvert campaign finance rules,” he said. “These other decisions had many consequences that the court could not foresee.”