SCOTUS Free-Speech Finale Strikes Down Election Spending Limits on Parties

Technically, the Supreme Court decision in Trump v Barbara wins the “finale” tag for this year’s term, settling the issue of birthright citizenship. However, the most impactful decision today on politics likely came in National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Comm’n, a key free-speech and campaign-finance case that may change the face of elections starting almost immediately. 

Until now, campaign-finance laws restricted the amount of money that political parties can spend in coordination with their own candidates. Supposedly, this prevented corruption, although it’s not clear how. Parties can spend unlimited amounts of money on races as long as they don’t coordinate with their own nominees, and the nominees could likewise spend all the money they raised as long as they didn’t coordinate with their political party. The limit only applied to coordinated spending, which came from the fervor for campaign-finance reform in the 1990s headed by John McCain and Russ Feingold. 

Writing for the 6-3 majority, Justice Brett Kavanaugh dismantled the absurdity as the affront to free speech that these rules have always been:

Ratified in 1791, the First Amendment provides that “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech.” As relevant here, the Federal Election Campaign Act, known as FECA, limits a political party’s campaign spending. Those spending limits necessarily abridge political parties’ freedom of speech: Because “virtually every means of communicating ideas in today’s mass society requires the expenditure of money,” a “restriction on the amount of money a person or group can spend on political communication during a campaign necessarily reduces the quantity of expression by restricting the number of issues discussed, the depth of their exploration, and the size of the audience reached.” Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U. S. 1, 19 (1976) (per curiam).

The limits themselves are loose enough to raise questions about their effectiveness in their intended mission:

FECA restricts a political party’s coordinated expenditures—that is, a political party’s spending on campaign activities in coordination with candidates. 52 U. S. C. §30116(d).1 The current political-party coordinated-expenditure limits vary by State and by office sought. The national committee of a political party may spend from $130,600 to $4,071,800 in coordination with an individual Senate candidate and from $65,300 to $130,600 in coordination with an individual House candidate. 91 Fed. Reg. 10393–10394 (2026). In the most recent Presidential election, the national committee of a political party could spend $32,392,200 in coordination with a Presidential candidate. 89 Fed. Reg. 5536 (2024).2

These numbers sound high, but races for federal offices cost a fortune these days. The limits on coordinated spending have done nothing to contain the rapid rise in those costs. To a large extent, the limits incentivize donors to shift their cash to PACs and super-PACs with much less transparency, both to evade limits on donations (which this case does not address) and on coordinated spending. Not only does that make little sense in terms of controlling corruption, but it also undermines the status of political parties and the accountability that voters can demand from them, as Kavanaugh explains:

But since 2001, political parties’ relative power has substantially diminished in comparison to outside groups. Colorado II contributed in part to that shift: The political party coordinated-expenditure limits impose a “stifling effect on the ability of the party to do what it exists to do.” Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Comm. v. Federal Election Comm’n, 518 U. S. 604, 630 (1996) (Colorado I) (opinion of Kennedy, J.); see R. Pildes, Romanticizing Democracy, Political Fragmentation, and the Decline of American Government, 124 Yale L. J. 804, 838–839 (2014). Meanwhile, donors can and do send their funds to Super PACs and other outside groups that have a First Amendment right to receive and spend unlimited money to support their independent political speech. See SpeechNow.org v. Federal Election Comm’n, 599 F. 3d 686 (CADC 2010) (en banc); see also Emily’s List v. Federal Election Comm’n, 581 F. 3d 1 (CADC 2009). In the 2024 election cycle, PACs raised over $15.7 billion, as compared to $2.7 billion by political parties. Federal Election Comm’n, Statistical Summary of 24-Month Campaign Activity of the 2023–2024 Election Cycle Press Release (Apr. 23, 2025). 

To uphold the political-party coordinated-expenditure limits here could therefore help consign political parties to continued second-tier status as compared to outside groups. Weakened political parties distort the political system. And in the views of many, the relatively diminished political parties have ushered in increased political polarization and fragmentation. For that reason, many who generally support campaign finance restrictions have called for elimination of the political-party coordinated-expenditure limits. 

This has been the fatal flaw in the McCain-Feingold approach all along. The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (BCRA) purportedly controlled the influence of money on political campaigns. All it accomplished, however, was the redirection of money to organizations with much less accountability for its use. Had money been allowed to flow directly to candidates and political parties, with unlimited ability to spend it, voters could hold those candidates and parties directly responsible for messaging and policy positions. Instead, the money and spending went into PACs and super-PACs with no accountability at all, and which frequently coordinated sotto voce with candidates and their campaigns anyway. The thin guise of separation allowed candidates and parties to refuse responsibility for campaign messaging, and that has led to an explosion of demagoguery ever since. 

Interestingly but also understandably, Kavanaugh chooses to avoid the issue of limits on contributions:

The Court and the dissent agree that the Government possesses an important interest in preventing circumvention of the base contribution limits. The Court concludes, as noted above, that the combination of the statutory base limits, earmarking rules, and disclosure requirements are sufficient to prevent circumvention of the base limits. The dissent believes that, in addition to those three statutory requirements, the statute’s coordinated expenditure limits are also necessary to prevent circumvention. As we stated above, that is a serious argument. But we ultimately and respectfully do not agree with the dissent on that point for the reasons already set forth at length in this opinion. 

Contribution limits also implicate the First Amendment. That will take a lawsuit by donors to candidates and/or political parties to force the court to confront that point. Kavanaugh and the court didn’t need to open that can of worms in NRSC v FEC, however, in order to resolve the dispute over spending limits. 

Justice Elena Kagan writes that the ruling undermines the contribution limits too:

The same statute also prevents circumvention of the contribution limits by capping political parties’ “coordinated expenditures” with candidates. When a party makes such a coordinated expenditure, it essentially pays the candidate’s bills—stepping up to fund something the candidate would otherwise have to. Without limits on those expenditures, a candidate could ask a donor to make a substantial contribution to the party so as to finance his own campaign expenses. It would then be as though the candidate contribution limits did not exist: The donor could give far more to the party than to the candidate directly, understanding that the money would be passed through to the candidate. And with that evasion of contribution limits, all the old opportunities for quid pro quo deals would come back into play. So Congress, sensibly enough, limited parties’ coordinated expenditures. By thus preventing circumvention of the basic contribution limits, Congress protected those limits’ capacity to suppress corruption.

But today, the Court rewrites the rules, to allow circumvention of the contribution limits. The majority invalidates Congress’s restriction of coordinated expenditures, thus enabling a party to serve as an alternative checking account for a campaign. As a result, a donor will be able to give a party as much as half a million dollars (as compared to the $7,000 he can give directly to the candidate) to cover the candidate’s bills. And the candidate can seek just such a donation. So the Court ushers back in the same opportunities for quid pro quo corruption that the contribution limits were meant to check. 

First off, that’s exactly what’s happening already under the rules, at least in terms of contributions. Candidates form joint campaigns with parties to use the latter’s contribution limits rather than the candidate limits. This decision is focused on spending, though, and does not disturb the contribution limits. And even to the extent it might change incentives, the decision incentivizes money to flow back to electorally accountable parties and official orgs like the NRSC rather than to dark-money super-PACs. And, as Kavanagh points out, limits on expenditures are necessarily limits on speech in the political marketplace, and were designed for that purpose. 

This is a good start on demolishing the BCRA-style reforms. Perhaps Congress can take over that wrecking ball in the next session. 

The latest episode of The Ed Morrissey Show podcast is now up! Today’s show features:

• Happy Independence Day, America — even those who seem most unhappy about it. 
• Andrew Malcolm and I discuss the apathy demonstrated by the Left, and how it looks more like antipathy for America. 
• Have civic values eroded as a result of American educational failures, or have politicians failed us? Or both? 

The Ed Morrissey Show is now a fully downloadable and streamable show at  Spotify, Apple Podcasts, the TEMS Podcast YouTube channel, and on Rumble and our own in-house portal at the #TEMS page!

Editor’s Note: The 2026 Midterms will determine the fate of President Trump’s America First agenda. Republicans must maintain control of both chambers of Congress.

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