Supreme Court to re-examine campaign-contribution limits
By The Associated Press
11.18.02
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WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court agreed today to take a new look at federal limits on campaign contributions to candidates.
The Court is to decide whether certain advocacy groups can contribute to candidates' campaigns. Currently, only individuals, political action committees, political parties and other campaign committees can give to candidates.
This case is unrelated to the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance law, which bans unlimited corporate, labor and individual contributions to the political parties. Opponents have challenged that law in the lower courts.
The Supreme Court has been more willing to uphold limits on contributions, which justices have said could give the appearance of corruption. In June 2001, a very divided Court ruled 5-4 in FEC v. Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee that political parties could not spend unlimited amounts of money if they coordinated their efforts with a candidate. And in January 2000, the Court voted 6-3 in Nixon v. Shrink Missouri Government PAC to back Missouri's contribution limits to state campaigns.
On the other hand, the Court has struck down spending restrictions on First Amendment grounds, likening money to free speech. Such reasoning led the Court in its 1976 decision Buckley v. Valeo to uphold post-Watergate limits on campaign contributions but throw out restrictions on how much candidates could spend on their campaigns.
At issue is in this case is whether North Carolina Right to Life and other nonprofit advocacy corporations — groups that raise money not through business ventures but through donations from supporters — can make campaign contributions. Such groups have neither business interests nor shareholders.
Several state anti-abortion groups fall into this category, and the National Rifle Association has tried to come under the same classification, according to Paul Sanford, director of FEC Watch, a watchdog group that is part of the Center for Responsive Politics, a research organization.
The Supreme Court in 1986 in FEC v. Massachusetts Citizens for Life overturned Federal Election Commission regulations and allowed these nonprofit advocacy corporations to pay for independent advertisements that specifically urge voters to support or oppose particular candidates. Such ads cannot be coordinated with the candidates they have endorsed, however.
Other corporations and labor unions are prohibited under federal law from using their treasuries to directly support candidates.
North Carolina Right to Life argued that advocacy corporations were different than businesses that could directly benefit from government actions.
The nonprofits offer "none of 'danger of corruption' to the political system that business corporations pose," argued the group's lawyer, James Bopp, who has represented several other organizations that have challenged campaign-spending limits as a violation of the First Amendment.
The 4th U.S Circuit Court of Appeals agreed.
"It would be foolhardy to pretend that a ban on the ability of advocacy groups to make contributions and expenditures does not impair their capacity to participate in the political process," the 4th Circuit said. "Making expenditures and funding campaigns are essential means by which citizens in a democracy can make themselves heard."
The six-member FEC could not obtain the four votes it needed to authorize an appeal to the Supreme Court, but the Justice Department appealed anyway.
Sanford said that if the Supreme Court agreed to allow corporate contributions, then business groups could set up their own nonprofits and use them to make donations to favored candidates.
"It's a fairly simple matter for a corporation to set itself up, take money from corporations and essentially launder it and pass it onto a candidate," Sanford said.
The case is Federal Election Commission v. Beaumont, 02-403.
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