Supreme Court refuses to hear right-wing lawsuit on campaign financing
The Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a Republican lawsuit challenging limits on party spending.
The lawsuit, brought by former Rep. Joseph Cao (R-La.) and the Republican National Committee against the Federal Election Commission, argued that a rule limiting the amount that parties could spend in coordination with its candidates violated their First Amendment rights. The suit was part of a sustained assault on campaign finance restrictions by conservatives.
Election law experts had considered it likely that the court would at least agree to hear the case, given that its conservative majority has been skeptical of rules restricting the flow of money into politics, as borne out most significantly in its sweeping 5-4 decision last year in a case called Citizens United v. FEC allowing corporations to fund election ads.
More recently, though, the court had refused to hear another case brought by the RNC challenging the prohibition on unlimited contributions to parties – the so-called soft money ban…
The court is, however, scheduled to hear arguments March 28 in a case challenging Arizona’s public financing system, which could have major implications for federal and state campaign finance laws.
The Campaign Legal Center, a group that works to diminish the influence of money in politics and filed a brief defending the challenged spending rules, praised the court for heading off a case that “would have blown huge loopholes in the federal campaign finance laws and enabled large-scale circumvention of the individual contribution limits.”