Federal Election Commission v. Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee (533 U.S. 431)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided June 25, 2001 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 533 U.S. 431 · 121 S. Ct. 2351
- Decided
- June 25, 2001
- Term
- October Term 2000
- Vote
- 5–4
- Majority author
- Justice Souter
- Issue area
- First Amendment
- Disposition
- Reversed
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Liberal
Opinion excerpt
Justice Souter delivered the opinion of the Court. In Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Comm. v. Federal Election Comm’n, 518 U. S. 604 (1996) (Colorado I), we held that spending limits set by the Federal Election Campaign Act were unconstitutional as applied to the Colorado Republican Party’s independent expenditures in connection with a senatorial campaign. We remanded for consideration of the party’s claim that all limits on expenditures by a political party in connection with congressional campaigns are facially unconstitutional and thus unenforceable even as to spending coordinated with a candidate. Today we reject that facial challenge to the limits on parties’ coordinated expenditures. I We first examined the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 in Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U. S. 1 (1976) (per curiam), where we held that the Act’s limitations on contributions to a candidate’s election campaign were generally constitutional, but that limitations on election expenditures were not. Id., at 12-59. Later cases have respected this line between contributing and spending. See, e. g., Nixon v. Shrink Missouri Government PAC, 528 U. S. 377, 386-388 (2000); Colorado I, supra, at 610, 614-615; Federal Election Comm’n v. Massachusetts Citizens for Life, Inc., 479 U. S. 238, 259-260 (1986). The simplicity of the distinction is qualified, however, by the Act’s provision for a…
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