Venue: | SCOTUS |
Facts: | VT campaign finance laws limit both the campaign finance expenditures and contributions. |
Posture: | Not stated. |
Issue: | Do these restrictions violate 1A? |
Holding: | Yes, they sure do. |
Rule: | Expenditure restrictions directly limit political speech. Contribution limits aren't per se impermissible, but these are too restrictive. |
Reasoning: | The expenditure part is easy: it controls what ads can be purchased.
We want to avoid corruption, and contribution limits help with that. At the same time, though, at some point a low enough limit will interfere with a challenger's ability to dislodge an incumbent. This is so strict that it will do significant harm to elections (there are five pretty smart reasons cited). |
Dicta: | Thomas (concurring): We should be willing to overrule Buckley
Stevens (dissenting): Money does not equal speech. We are creating a system where our officials have to spend their time fundraising instead of legislating. |