Supreme Court Strikes Down Two-Year Donation Caps In Landmark Campaign Finance Case
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/supre...#ixzz2xjwhiWp5
"Today's Court decision in McCutcheon v FEC is an important first step toward restoring the voice of candidates and party committees and a vindication for all those who support robust, transparent political discourse," Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus said in a statement.
http://www.businessinsider.com/supre...#ixzz2xjzKEyiE
Another 5-4 split like expected.
And Thomas did not think it went far enough...
So individual donors are going to be tracked even further. Hopefully it gets outrageous enough that there is a backlash against candidates that are deemed to be in the hip pocket of wealthy individuals.
Roberts wrote:
Spending large sums of money in connection with elections, but not in connection with an effort to control the exercise of an officeholder’s official duties, does not give rise to quid pro quo corruption.
Nor does the possibility that an individual who spends large sums may garner “influence over or access to” elected officials or political parties.
This twisted legal logic was then used by Roberts to create a narrow rationale allowing the Court’s conservative majority to throw out the contribution caps.
The Government argues that the aggregate [contribution] limits further the permissible objective of preventing quid pro quo corruption. The difficulty is that once the aggregate limits kick in, they ban all contributions of any amount, even though Congress’s selection of a base limit indicates its belief that contributions beneath that amount do not create a cognizable risk of corruption. The Government must thus defend the aggregate limits by demonstrating that they prevent cir vention of the base limits, a function they do not serve in any meaningful way.
Roberts then tossed the ball back to Congress, asserting that while this part of its 2002 law was uncons utional, Congress could try again to write better rules.
There are multiple alternatives available to Congress that would serve the Government’s interest in preventing cir vention while avoiding “unnecessary abridgment” of First Amendment rights. Such alternatives might include targeted restrictions on transfers among candidates and political committees, or tighter earmarking rules.
These lines of reasoning are a classic case of Supreme Court justices who either don’t understand how politics works—or understand it all too well—and want to shift the balance of power in Washington by undermining Congress’s ability to regulate elections and increasing the power of political parties and their biggest contributors.
http://www.alternet.org/tea-party-and-right/chief-justice-john-roberts-shreds-another-campaign-finance-law-individuals-may?akid=11669.187590.7_kAx9&rd=1&src=newsletter97 7918&t=3
99% Human-American disenfranchised, 1% Human-Americans votes count 100x.
The damage the Repugs done will last for decades.
And if they get get control of Exec and Congress, the destruction will be 10x worse.
Repugs America and make it un able.
Thanks, ST Repug voters!
this ed up legal "reasoning" echoes Kennedy in C-U
"The appearance of influence or access, furthermore, will not cause the electorate to lose faith in our democracy."
what a bunch of right-wing extremist activist corrupt clowns
Thanks, Repugs! I bet y'all don't even miss Robert Bork!
"just callin balls n strikes!"
you betcha!
Last edited by boutons_deux; 04-02-2014 at 02:51 PM.
Unfortunate decision.
I thought less government was a good thing in America?
Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't.
Solid analysis with excellent support to back up your assertion.
I'll be sure to add more when I'm done golfing and give a .
That kinda flies in the face of what your boy Breitbart thinks
Attempts to pigeonhole me will be fruitless as I don't affiliate myself with any political party.That kinda flies in the face of what your boy Breitbart thinks
Good. Get a real job if you want to donate...
the people who will now dominate buying politicians don't have jobs, they have mega wealth
David Bernstein takes on Breyer's dissent:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/v...-finance-case/In 1927, Justice Brandeis penned an extraordinarily influential concurrence supporting cons utional protection for freedom of speech in Whitney v. California. Consistent with his Progressivism, Brandeis defended freedom of speech primarily on the instrumental ground that it promoted free and rational public discussion, essential for the American people to govern themselves. By focusing on the social interest in democratic self-government, Brandeis attempted to differentiate freedom of speech from individualist rights such as liberty of contract and other traditional assertions of natural rights against the government.
By segregating speech rights from other rights protected by the so-called Lochner era Supreme Court, and narrowing the potential scope of such rights–Brandeis, for example, didn’t think much of corporate exercise of political speech rights–Brandeis helped ensure that cons utional protection for freedom of speech survived the sweeping cons utional changes that the New Deal and Franklin Roosevelt’s appointees to the Court put in motion. Indeed, with encouragement from the Roosevelt Administration and the elite bar, freedom of speech became a “preferred freedom” and the first and most important arrow in the post–New Deal Court’s civil libertarian quiver.
The Warren Court in its heyday happily moved beyond Brandeis’s relatively narrow notion of freedom of speech to protect cultural radicals and others who engaged in speech disapproved of by local or national majorities. Meanwhile, a new (and better) implicit justification for freedom of speech took hold, much more in line with American tradition: the government cannot be trusted to be a censor, deciding which speech is worthy of protection and which must be suppressed. It’s not only too easy for majorities to use the government to suppress minority expression, it’s far too easy for the government itself to use power over expression to benefit in bent legislators and the interest groups who support them, leading to an ossified status quo, both cultural and political. Moreover, speech was once more seen as an individual right, transcending the marketplace of ideas rationale.
It’s therefore not all that surprising that when the Supreme Court decided Buckley v. Valeo in 1976, affirming some limits on campaign contributions to avoid corruption, but holding that political donations receive substantial First Amendment protection, the opinion was written by liberal stalwart William Brennan, and was thought too weak by the ACLU.
Since then, opposition to First Amendment protection of campaign donations has become a significant “cause” on the liberal left. It’s not hard to see why: the legacy mainstream media, Hollywood, academia, publishing, the legal profession, the mainline churches, and the arts, i.e., almost all of the leading opinion-making areas of American life, are dominated by liberals (though conservatives dominate talk radio, evangelical churches, and have Fox News). The one place where the playing field is more or less level is in campaign spending. Limit campaign spending, and left-leaning opinion-makers utterly dominate American political discourse.
But how can liberals, who so expansively interpret other cons utional provisions, narrow the First Amendment so that campaign finance no longer gets protection?
Justice Breyer’s dissent today shows the way, as he revives the old Progressive conception of freedom of speech as serving instrumental purposes (which he calls “First Amendment interests”), rather than protecting individual rights or reining in potential government abuses. And once we identify those “First Amendment interests,” we must limit freedom of speech to ensure that they are advanced.
Thus, Justice Breyer, writes, “Consider at least one reason why the First Amendment protects political speech. Speech does not exist in a vacuum. Rather, political communication seeks to secure government action. A politically oriented ‘marketplace of ideas’ seeks to form a public opinion that can and will influence elected representatives.” Just to make sure he’s not being too subtle, Breyer goes back to the source, Justice Brandeis, citing his opinion in Whitney for the proposition that freedom of speech is protected because it’s ”essential to effective democracy.”
Further showing off his affinity for the Progressive statism of a century ago (noted by Josh Blackman and me here), Breyer turns cons utional history on its head, by declaring that the purpose of the First Amendment was not to prevent government abuses, but to ensure ”public opinion could be channeled into effective governmental action.” As Tim Sandefur points out, “Actually, the framers devised the cons utional structure to prevent public opinion from being channeled into effective government action. One cannot honestly read The Federalist without understanding that the system was designed in order to ensure that public opinion would only be translated into government action when it had been sufficiently challenged, weighed, and considered for its correspondence to principles of justice.”
In any event, Breyer adds that “corruption,” by which he means individuals engaging in too much freedom of speech via campaign donations, ”derails the essential speech-to-government-action tie. Where enough money calls the tune, the general public will not be heard. Insofar as corruption cuts the link between political thought and political action, a free marketplace of political ideas loses its point.”
The danger of this argument is that analogous reasoning could be used to censor major media corporations such as the New York Times, Hollywood, and so on, to wit: ”When Hollywood spends billions of dollars each year advancing a liberal agenda, the general public will not be heard. Instead of a free marketplace of ideas, we get a marketplace in which major Hollywood moguls have hundreds of thousands of times the ‘speech power’ of the average American.” And given that almost everyone deems it appropriate to regulate the economic marketplace to counter inefficiencies and unfairness, why should the much-less-efficient (because it’s much more costly for an individual to make an error in his economic life than to have a mistaken ideology) marketplace of ideas be exempt from harsh regulation?
In short, once one adopts the Progressive view of freedom of speech as only going so far as to protect the public interest in a well-functioning marketplace of ideas, there is no obvious reason to limit reduced scrutiny of government “public interest” regulation of speech to campaign finance regulations. Nor is it obvious why the Court should give strict scrutiny to speech restrictions that don’t directly affect the marketplace of ideas, instead of just using a malleable test balancing “speech interests” versus other interests.
Not surprisingly, then, Breyer is the Justice who is least inclined to protect freedom of speech in a variety of contexts. And it’s troubling that his three liberal colleagues joined his opinion today. Josh Blackman and I wrote three years ago, “Breyer’s apparent ascendance as doyen of the Court’s liberal wing threatens to roll back decades of pro-liberty precedents, and to destroy the consensus on the Court that freedom of speech and other essential rights must not be sacrificed to the shifting whims of legislative majorities.” I hope to be a failed prophet.
"Limit campaign spending, and left-leaning opinion-makers utterly dominate American political discourse."
so? is there a problem?
America is ed up now due to conservative/Repug/tea bagger/VRWC/corporate policies. Time to go back to liberal/progressive policies that actually helped the people, the country advance.
I have rarely been as saddened by a Supreme Court decision as I was with this one and with its earlier, similar "United" decision.
I honestly feel like this leaves American democracy in the dust. Oligarchs in the persons of the Kochs and the Soros' and the Bloombergs and the Adelman's will determine the elected officials of the future.
You and I, dear readers, can rant and rail to our hearts' contents, and it will amount to nothing more than sound and fury signifying nothing.
Like an $8/gal fuel tax.
yep, $8/gal.Like an $8/gal fuel tax.
Still a ing stupid idea.
'Cause $12/gal gas is a real boon to the 99%. They'll love the outta that.
And before you say you can "fix" this idiotic regressive tax, please specify exactly how it could be "fixed".
back on topic......Roberts like all rich snobs confuses money with free speech
Justice Roberts is Wrong. Money and Speech are not the Same.
From Ring of Fire:
http://www.ringoffireradio.com/2014/...-money-speech/Yesterday, the Supreme Court handed down its decision in McCutcheon v. Federal Elections Commission (McCutcheon) and decided to strike down the aggregate limits on campaign finance contributions. The reasoning, according to Justice John Roberts, who delivered the Court’s opinion along with Justices Scalia, Kennedy, and Alito, is that the right to spend money on elections is the same as the freedom to speak.
Justice Roberts is either naive or misguided and neither option is becoming of the nation’s highest legal authority.
The political landslide that has been won in the Court started with Citizens United, a case that, in the view of the nation, was horribly unpopular. This decision put the nation on a crash-course with the devastation that awaits unbridled and unchecked spending by corporations and private interests in our national discussions and elections.
In the words of the dissenting opinion in McCutcheon, delivered by Justice Breyer, along with Justices Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan, “Taken together with Citizens United…, today’s decision eviscerates our Nation’s campaign finance laws, leaving a remnant incapable of dealing with the grave problems of democratic legitimacy that those laws were intended to resolve.”
If money is 'speech,' then those with no money have no voice and If money and speech are the same thing then speech is not free.
"money = speech" will be repeated until the sheeple "know" that is exactly the "originalist" intent of the FFs, much like "shall not be infringed" is repeated to pervert the 2nd Amendment.
Ruling’s Breadth Hints That More Campaign Finance Dominoes May Fall
The sweeping language and logic of Wednesday’s Supreme Court decision on campaign finance may imperil other legal restrictions on money in politics.
The 5-to-4 decision, which struck down overall limits on contributions by individuals to candidates and parties, was the latest in a series of campaign finance decisions from the court led by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. that took an expansive view of First Amendment rights and a narrow one of political corruption. According to experts in election law, there is no reason to think that the march toward deregulating election spending will stop with the ruling in McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission.
“Those who support limits see the court right now as the T. rex from ‘Jurassic Park,’ ” said Justin Levitt, a law professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. “What’s next? ‘Just don’t move. He can’t see us if we don’t move.’ ”
For now, federal law bars corporations from making contributions to candidates, though they can spend what they like independently to support or oppose candidates.
Contributions from individuals to candidates are capped at $2,600 per election. Individual contributions to political parties are capped, too. Public financing of elections is allowed.
All of those limits may be vulnerable under the reasoning of the McCutcheon and Citizens United decisions, as well as the “soft money” ban, which limits individual contributions to political parties even if the money is to be spent on activities unrelated to federal elections.
The next case may arrive soon. At their private conference on Friday, the justices are scheduled to consider whether to hear Iowa Right to Life Committee v. Tooker, No. 13-407, a pe ion from James Bopp Jr., one of the lawyers on the winning side in the McCutcheon case. It challenges an Iowa law that bans contributions from corporations but allows them from unions.
Mr. Bopp said he had scoured Chief Justice Roberts’s controlling opinion in the McCutcheon case for hints and clues. “I didn’t see any real blatant signals about what they would entertain in the future,” he said. “On the other side, this is the latest in a series of cases from a five-member majority that is very friendly to the First Amendment.”
( friendly?
Mr. Bopp made both narrow and broad arguments in the Iowa case. The distinction the law makes between corporations and unions violates equal protection principles, he told the justices. In any event, he added, “banning corporate political contributions violates the First Amendment.”
The Supreme Court may announce on Monday whether it will hear the case.
“The real question after McCutcheon,” said Nathaniel Persily, a law professor at Stanford, “is whether the ban on corporation and union contributions or the limits on individual contributions are vulnerable.”
“I think that a majority on the court would like to strike both down, but that the backlash from Citizens United may prevent Roberts from moving too quickly on this,” he said. “The corporate ban is more likely to fall sooner, in part because it is hard to justify a complete ban, rather than limits, following Citizens United.”
In his dissent in the McCutcheon case, Justice Stephen G. Breyer said the majority had left the campaign finance system in tatters.
“Taken together with Citizens United,” he wrote, “today’s decision eviscerates our nation’s campaign finance laws, leaving a remnant incapable of dealing with the grave problems of democratic legitimacy that those laws were intended to resolve.”
On the issue of soft money, the Supreme Court upheld the ban in 2003, in McConnell v. F.E.C., reasoning that
large contributions to parties
“are likely to create actual or apparent indebtedness on the part of federal officeholders” and
“are likely to buy donors preferential access to federal officeholders.”
On Wednesday, Chief Justice Roberts seemed to reject that thinking. “Government regulation,” he wrote, “may not target the general gra ude
In 2010, the Supreme Court affirmed without comment a ruling upholding the soft money ban, which was challenged by the Republican National Committee. Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy and Clarence Thomas voted to hear the case.
The lower court had seemed to issue its ruling reluctantly. The argument in favor of allowing soft money contributions “carries considerable logic and force,” Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh wrote for a three-judge panel of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia.
“Under current law, outside groups — unlike candidates and political parties — may receive unlimited donations both to advocate in favor of federal candidates and to sponsor issue ads,” Judge Kavanaugh wrote. But he added that the arguments about a disparity that “discriminates against the national political parties in political and legislative debates” should be directed to the Supreme Court.
Richard H. Pildes, a law professor at New York University, said the logic of the McCutcheon decision may cause the court to return to the question, adding that a larger role for political parties would be a welcome development.
“Particularly with the court’s greater recognition, expressed in the McCutcheon oral arguments, that its own law has weakened the parties and encouraged the rise of outside groups,” he said, “McCutcheon could pave the path for the fourth vote needed for the court to reconsider this issue.”
Heather Gerken, a law professor at Yale, said she feared that the court would build on its 2011 decision in Arizona Free Enterprise Club v. Bennett, which struck down an Arizona law that provided escalating matching funds to candidates who accepted public financing. But it left more straightforward systems intact.
“My fear is that the court’s next target is the most revered pillar of campaign finance: public financing,” Professor Gerken said. “The lines are in the water, and we’ll see if the Roberts court bites.”
She added that the court sometimes seemed blind to the real-world consequences of its rulings.
“We want judges to be shielded from politics,” she said, “but we don’t want them to be naďve about politics.”
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/04/04/us/politics/ruling-hints-more-campaign-finance-dominoes-may-fall.html?from=homepage
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