US Supreme Court to hear Republican challenge to 'coordinated' campaign spending curbs
The justices took up an appeal by two Republican committees and Vance, who was running for the U.S. Senate in Ohio when the litigation began, of a lower court's ruling that upheld restrictions on the amount of money parties can spend on campaigns with input from candidates they support.
The justices are due to hear the case in their next term, which begins in October.
Republican President Donald Trump's administration filed a court brief backing the Republican committees and Vance, who is now serving as his vice president. Lawyers for the Justice Department urged the Supreme Court to take up the case and appoint a third party to defend the lower court's ruling in place of the Justice Department.
At issue in the case is whether federal limits on coordinated campaign spending violate the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment protection against government abridgment of freedom of speech.
The Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 and its amendments regulate fundraising and spending in U.S. elections by limiting the amount of money that people, groups and political parties can contribute or spend on a candidate, with the aim of preventing corruption.
Under that law, spending that is made by a political party to advocate for or against a candidate, but is not coordinated with a candidate's campaign, is considered an "independent expenditure" not subject to amount limitations.
Spending that is coordinated between a party and a campaign, however, is restricted by the law and varies based on the population of the state where the candidate is running for office, lower in states with smaller populations and higher in those with larger populations. In 2024, limits ranged from around $123,000 to $3.7 million for Senate candidates and from around $62,000 to $123,000 for House of Representatives candidates, according to court papers.
In a 2022 lawsuit, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, National Republican Congressional Committee, Vance and former Republican congressman Steve Chabot of Ohio sought a court order blocking the Federal Election Commission from enforcing limits on so-called "coordinated party expenditures." Vance was running for a Senate seat in Ohio at the time.
The plaintiffs argued that the limits "severely restrict political party committees from doing what the First Amendment entitles them to do: fully associate with and advocate for their own candidates for federal office."
The Cincinnati-based U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in a 2024 ruling upheld the limits on coordinated campaign expenditures, concluding that they comported with the Constitution. The 6th Circuit in its ruling said it was required to follow a 2001 ruling by the Supreme Court arising from Colorado that addressed the very same issue.
On appeal, the plaintiffs told the Supreme Court that developments in campaign finance over the intervening decades, including shifts in the Supreme Court's jurisprudence, have eroded the rationale underlying the 2001 ruling in the Colorado case and urged the justices to consider overruling it. Vance was vice president-elect when the appeal was filed in December 2024.
Three Democratic groups - the Democratic National Committee, Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee - asked to intervene to defend the 6th Circuit's decision.
In a landmark decision on campaign finance in a case called Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court in 2010 enabled corporations and other outside groups to spend unlimited amounts of money on elections, striking down federal limits on independent expenditures as a violation of the First Amendment.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Rhyl Journal
26 minutes ago
- Rhyl Journal
Hamas ‘ready for a ceasefire' but only if a deal ends the war in Gaza
The militant group stopped short of accepting a US-backed proposal announced by Donald Trump hours earlier. The US president said on Tuesday that Israel had agreed on terms for a 60-day ceasefire and urged Hamas to accept the deal before conditions worsen. He has been increasing pressure on the Israeli government and Hamas to broker a ceasefire and hostage agreement and bring about an end to the war. Mr Trump said the 60-day period would be used to work towards ending the war — something Israel says it will not accept until Hamas is defeated. He said a deal might come together as soon as next week. Hamas's response raised questions about whether the latest offer could lead to an actual pause in fighting. Hamas official Taher al-Nunu said the militant group was 'ready and serious regarding reaching an agreement', adding that the group is 'ready to accept any initiative that clearly leads to the complete end to the war'. A Hamas delegation is expected to meet Egyptian and Qatari mediators in Cairo on Wednesday to discuss the proposal, according to an Egyptian official. Throughout the nearly 21-month war, ceasefire talks have repeatedly faltered over whether the war should end as part of a deal. Hamas has said it is willing to free the remaining 50 hostages, less then half of whom are said to be alive, in exchange for a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and an end to the war. Israel says it will only agree to end the war if Hamas surrenders, disarms and exiles itself, something the group refuses to do. An Israeli official said the latest proposal calls for a 60-day deal that would include a partial Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and a surge in humanitarian aid to the territory. The mediators and the US would provide assurances about talks on an end to the war, but Israel is not committing to that as part of the latest proposal, the official said. It was not clear how many hostages would be freed as part of the agreement, but previous proposals have called for the release of about 10. Israel has yet to publicly comment on Mr Trump's announcement. On Monday, he is set to host Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for talks at the White House, days after Ron Dermer, a senior Netanyahu adviser, held discussions with senior US officials about Gaza, Iran and other matters. On Tuesday, Trump wrote on social media that Israel had 'agreed to the necessary conditions to finalize the 60 Day CEASEFIRE, during which time we will work with all parties to end the War'. 'I hope, for the good of the Middle East, that Hamas takes this Deal, because it will not get better — IT WILL ONLY GET WORSE.'
Spectator
27 minutes ago
- Spectator
No, British trans people aren't at risk of ‘genocide'
The Supreme Court judgment on the definition of a woman on 16 April restored a degree of sanity to a world that was in danger of going mad. Even Keir Starmer now knows that a woman is a matter of biology rather than ideology. Can somebody please tell the Americans? Or, more precisely, those progressive types over the pond who like to concern themselves with other people's business. The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention and Human Security is an American non-profit organisation that started out to address concerns about the situation in Iraq in the wake of Isis. The institute claims to connect 'the global grassroots with the tools of genocide prevention', and generally to do a bit of good in the world. How effective their campaigns might be in a world where aggression remains rife is for others to judge. Their latest red flag alert, however, homed in on the United Kingdom and, in particular, the experiences of transgender and intersex people. They saw 'evidence of genocidal intent and actions targeting these communities'. According to them, 'this hostile environment is a subtle, pernicious and clear attempt to eradicate transgender and intersex people from British life.' The hyperbole is so far from my experiences as a trans person that it is ridiculous, and such deluded campaigners from afar should merit no further discussion. What bothers me more are people closer to home who ought to know better. Last week, Victoria McCloud – a former judge, who also happens to be trans – announced: I now see it as my sad duty to make an evidence-based report to Genocide Watch and The Lemkin Institute requesting investigation into the systematic oppression of the trans community of the UK. Perhaps we now know why the Americans suddenly poked their noses in? And that wasn't a one-off. The BBC recently reported McCloud's fear that 'someone's going to get killed' because of the Supreme Court ruling. My view of the situation is rather more mundane. Could it be that some people don't like the judgment and fear being called to account for their actions? It was never right for male transitioners to assume that they could co-opt themselves into the rights of women simply by uttering the magic words 'I identify as a woman'. We now live in a saner – and better – world where everybody knows that other people's rights matter too. McCloud needs to get over it. My fear is the genuinely vulnerable will be put at risk, not from some genocidal mob but from fear itself. As trans people, we are told regularly about that 'systematic oppression'. When there is power in being a victim, claims of persecution can attract benefits and rewards. For over a decade, the trans community has drawn in vulnerable youngsters with promises that can never be delivered. Now I sense that the carnival is moving on: the Cass Review put the brakes on the chemical castration of children; the Supreme Court gave women the confidence to object to people they perceived to be men in their spaces; and Pride has lost its grip on our public institutions – at least in councils run by Reform UK. But while society moves on, some youngsters risk being left to flounder. Some never experienced puberty, others were led to believe that they were the opposite sex at unknown cost to their psychological development. Rather more were told that they had a gender identity that set them apart from mere muggles. Life might be far more complicated for them in the coming years and decades. They need to be helped to focus on the things that really matter – building committed relationships, finding productive employment, and taking up their place in society. It helps nobody to ruminate on the fiction that they are hated for claiming a transgender identity. The reality is that few people even care. The world of their future will have its challenges, but genocidal mobs trying to eradicate trans people from the UK are hardly likely to feature – whatever a former judge might like to believe.
The Guardian
29 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Trump's ‘Alligator Alcatraz' tour was a calculated celebration of the dystopian
Donald Trump's tour of the bloodcurdlingly-monikered – and hastily-constructed – 'Alligator Alcatraz' migrants detention center in Florida's Everglades had the hallmarks of a calculatedly provocative celebration of the dystopian. Accompanied by Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, the Florida governor Ron DeSantis and a phalanx of journalists, the US president saw only virtue in the vista of mesh fencing, barbed wire and forbidding steel bunk beds. 'Between Kristi and Ron, it's really government working together,' he said. 'They have done an amazing job. I'm proud of them.' Not that Trump was blind to the intimidating nature of the facility his long crusade against undocumented people had willed into existence in this hot, steamy part of southern Florida, prized by environmentalists as a crucial nature preserve but now redesigned to be a location of dread to those lacking documentary proof of their right to be in the US. 'Biden wanted me in here,' he said, snidely referring to his predecessor in the White House, who he accuses – without evidence – of orchestrating criminal prosecutions against him. 'It didn't work out that way, but he wanted me in here, the son of a bitch.' Tuesday's visit seemed to represent a new landmark in the administration's embrace of unabashedly authoritarian solutions to meet what has been Trump's defining issue since even before his first term: migration. Recent weeks have seen several escalations as the White House and law enforcement agencies have sought to project an ever more draconian approach. Deaths have been recorded of several detainees who had been taken into custody by Immigration, Customs and Enforcement (Ice) officials. Footage of masked officers without insignia arresting people in the streets has sent shockwaves through immigrant communities nationwide. National guards troops and marines have been deployed against demonstrators protesting migrant roundups on the streets of Los Angeles, even as local authorities and California's Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, insisted they were not needed. In what has seemed like performative acts of political intimidation, several Democrats have been arrested and handcuffed by Ice and FBI agents near detention facilities or immigration courts. Senator Alex Padilla of California was pinned to the ground and handcuffed after trying to ask a question of Noem at a press conference, even after identifying himself. The administration's schtick was clear when Nayib Bukele, the president of El Salvador and self-proclaimed 'world's coolest dictator', was feted in the White House in April days after more than 200 Venezuelan alleged gang members were summarily deported from the US to the sprawling Cecot facility in El Salvador. Shortly afterwards, Noem compounded the message by traveling to the center – said to have capacity for 40,000 prisoners – where she posed outside a cell into which large numbers shaven-headed detainees were herded. All of the this has drawn howls of condemnation from critics as signaling red flags for the state of US democracy and constitutional guarantees. Tuesday's event indicated the strength of the administration's contempt for such concerns. It was case of all-in on the Bukele approach, at least in imagery if not in scale. Enough beds have been installed in two separate areas of the facility to house 5,000 prisoners. Seized from its owners, Miami Dade county, by DeSantis using emergency powers as governor, the setting has drawn accusations of cruelty from immigrants rights organizations who point to the area's extreme heat and humidity and surrounding marshlands, which contains alligators, Burmese pythons and swarms of mosquitoes. Trump seemed to revel in the potential for detainees' misery at what was termed a round-table discussion but which devolved into fawning praise of his leadership from administration and state officials and obsequious questions from journalists representing friendly rightwing news outlets. 'It might be as good as the real Alcatraz site,' he said. 'That's a spooky one too, isn't it? That's a tough site.' As if in confirmation that this was an event designed to showcase ruthlessness, Trump handed the floor to Stephen Miller, the powerful White House deputy chief of staff and widely-acknowledged mastermind of the anti-immigrant offensive, calling him 'our superstar'. Sign up to This Week in Trumpland A deep dive into the policies, controversies and oddities surrounding the Trump administration after newsletter promotion Miller responded with a pithy summation of the policy's raison d'être. 'What you've done over the last five months [is] to deliver on a 50-year hope and dream of the American people to secure the border,' he said. 'There's a 2,000 mile border with one of the poorest countries in the world, and you have open travel from 150 countries into Central America and South America. 'There are 2 billion people in the world that would economically benefit from illegally coming to the United States. Through the deployment of the military, through … novel legal and diplomatic tools, through the building of physical infrastructure, through the empowering of Ice and border patrol and the entire federal law enforcement apparatus, President Trump achieved absolute border security.' And there would be more to come – courtesy of funds secured for deportations in Trump's sweeping spending bill, which secured narrow Senate passage during Trump's visit to the facility. 'Once this legislation is passed, he will be able to make that, with those resources, permanent,' Miller said. PBS reported that the bill envisions roughly $150bn being spent on the administration's deportation agenda over the next four years. Taking the soft cop line, Noem on Tuesday told undocumented people that it didn't have to be this way; they could still, to use the administration's terminology, take the 'self-deport' option by returning voluntarily to their home countries – where she said the governments were waiting with open arms. 'Anybody who sees these news clips should know you could still go home on your own, you can self-deport,' she said, adding that they could apply to return to the United States 'the right way'. A more telling attitude to accountability was displayed by Trump himself at the end of the media question and answer session when a Fox News reporter asked how long detainees could expect to spend at the Florida facility – days, weeks or months. After clarifying the question, Trump seemed – or perhaps decided – to misunderstand it. 'This is my home state,' he said. 'I love it … I'll spend a lot of time here. I'll be here as much as I can. Very nice question.'
