The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear a Republican-led challenge to a federal campaign finance law provision that limits how much political parties can spend in coordination with candidates. The case, which centers on free speech claims, involves Vice President JD Vance, who was a U.S. Senate candidate in Ohio when the lawsuit was initiated.
The justices took up an appeal from Vance and two Republican committees, contesting a lower court’s decision that upheld the spending limits. The challengers argue the restrictions violate constitutional protections by capping party spending influenced by input from supported candidates.
The Supreme Court is set to hear the case during its next term, which begins in October.
The Trump administration, under then-Republican President Donald Trump, filed a brief in support of JD Vance and the Republican committees. Vance, now serving as Trump’s vice president, is a central figure in the case. The Justice Department also urged the Court to take up the matter and requested the appointment of an outside party to defend the lower court’s ruling, given that the department no longer supports it.
At the heart of the case is a constitutional question: Do federal limits on coordinated campaign spending between political parties and candidates violate the First Amendment’s protection of free speech?
The Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971, along with subsequent amendments, governs fundraising and spending in U.S. elections by imposing limits on how much individuals, organizations, and political parties can contribute to or spend on behalf of candidates. The law aims to curb corruption and undue influence in federal campaigns.
Under this framework, political party spending that is made without coordination with a candidate’s campaign—classified as an “independent expenditure”—is not subject to spending caps. In contrast, “coordinated expenditures”, in which a party works in tandem with a candidate, are strictly limited. These limits vary by the population size of the state in which a candidate is running: lower in less populous states, and higher in more populous ones. According to court filings, the 2024 limits ranged from about $123,000 to $3.7 million for Senate races and approximately $62,000 to $123,000 for House contests.
In a 2022 lawsuit, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, National Republican Congressional Committee, JD Vance, and former Ohio congressman Steve Chabot asked a court to block the Federal Election Commission (FEC) from enforcing these coordinated spending limits.
The plaintiffs argued that the restrictions “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.”
In a 2024 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, based in Cincinnati, upheld the legality of the coordinated expenditure caps, finding them consistent with constitutional protections. The court cited precedent from a 2001 Supreme Court ruling in a similar case from Colorado, which had upheld the same kind of limitations. The 6th Circuit emphasized that it was bound to follow that Supreme Court precedent.
When the plaintiffs appealed to the Supreme Court, they urged the justices to reconsider the older precedent. They argued that “developments in campaign finance” and shifts in the Court’s broader First Amendment jurisprudence had undermined the logic of the 2001 decision. At the time of the appeal’s filing in December 2024, JD Vance was already serving as vice president-elect.
On Monday, the Supreme Court granted the plaintiffs’ request to review the case and also approved a motion from three Democratic groups—the Democratic National Committee, Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee—to intervene in defense of the lower court’s ruling.
Marc Elias, attorney for the Democratic groups, told Reuters that the Republican Party has “spent decades trying to eliminate statutory limits on political party expenditures that are coordinated with candidates’ campaigns.” He added that the Democratic intervenors would offer “a vigorous and informed defense of the coordinated expenditure limits now under attack.”
This legal battle unfolds against the backdrop of the Supreme Court’s influential 2010 Citizens United v. FEC decision, which struck down limits on independent expenditures by corporations and outside groups, ruling such restrictions violated the First Amendment’s free speech clause. While Citizens United opened the door to unlimited outside spending, the legality of coordinated expenditures between candidates and parties remains at the heart of this newly revived constitutional debate.
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