By John Kruzel
WASHINGTON, June 30 (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court has again struck down campaign spending limits, this time rejecting on Tuesday federal restrictions on coordinated spending between political parties and their candidates on free speech grounds.
The ruling comes as major Republican committees head toward the November midterm elections with a significant cash advantage over their Democratic counterparts.
Siding with Vice President JD Vance and other Republican challengers, the court ruled 6-3 that a cap on the amount of money parties can spend on campaigns with input from candidates violates the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment protections against government abridgment of freedom of speech.
Conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who authored the ruling, said that “constitutional text, history, and precedent establish that the political-party coordinated-expenditure limits violate the First Amendment.”
The court’s six conservative justices were in the majority, while its three liberal justices dissented.
The majority overruled a 2001 Supreme Court ruling arising from Colorado that addressed the very same issue, determining that developments in campaign finance over the intervening decades, including shifts in the court’s jurisprudence, have eroded the rationale underlying that prior ruling.
Vance was running for the U.S. Senate in Ohio when the lawsuit challenging the restrictions was filed in 2022.
The Supreme Court issued its campaign finance ruling with the November midterm elections looming, as President Donald Trump’s fellow Republicans seek to retain control of Congress.
Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform after the ruling: “The Supreme Court just took restrictions off political spending! A BIG WIN FOR REPUBLICANS and, more importantly, The First Amendment!”
The three major Republican committees — the Republican National Committee, the National Republican Congressional Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee — ended May with $256 million in cash and no debt. That was more than double the roughly $126 million held by their Democratic counterparts, who also carried more than $18 million in debt.
The court’s ruling may lead party committees to seek the same discounted rates for television and radio advertisements that candidates have long enjoyed, though legal experts said this would raise an untested legal question.
COORDINATED PARTY EXPENDITURES
Trump’s administration backed the challenge to the limits on the type of political spending at issue, formally called coordinated party expenditures. The challenge was brought in 2022 by two Republican committees, Republican former congressman Steve Chabot of Ohio and Vance, who was running for the U.S. Senate in Ohio at the time.
The Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, in several rulings since 2010 has chipped away at campaign finance laws. These include rulings striking down federal limits on independent political expenditures by corporations and unions and the overall amount an individual can spend on federal political contributions as First Amendment violations.
A 1971 law called the Federal Election Campaign Act regulates fundraising and spending in U.S. elections by limiting the amount that can be spent on a candidate, with the aim of preventing corruption.
Under that law, spending by a political party to advocate for or against a candidate that is not coordinated with a candidate’s campaign is considered an “independent expenditure” — and not subject to a cap.
Spending that is coordinated between a party and a campaign, however, has been restricted.
These spending limits have varied based on the population of the state where the candidate is running for office, lower in states with smaller populations and higher in those with larger populations. In 2025, restrictions ranged from around $127,000 to $3.9 million for Senate candidates and from around $63,000 to $127,000 for House of Representatives candidates.
The Cincinnati-based U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in 2024 upheld the limits, concluding that they comported with the Constitution. The 6th Circuit said it was required to follow a 2001 Supreme Court ruling arising from Colorado that addressed the very same issue.
The plaintiffs had urged the justices to consider overruling it.
Because the Federal Election Commission under Trump declined to defend the provision of federal law challenged by Vance and the other plaintiffs, the Supreme Court appointed lawyer Roman Martinez to do so. It also granted a request by the Democratic National Committee, Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee to intervene to defend the spending limits.
ELECTION-RELATED DECISIONS
The Supreme Court has issued multiple rulings during its current term that have election implications.
The justices on Monday backed state laws that allow mail-in ballots received after Election Day to be counted, rejecting a Republican-led challenge to a five-day grace period in Mississippi and dealing a setback to Trump.
The court in April gutted a key provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, opening the door for Republican-led Southern states to dismantle Democratic-held majority-Black and majority-Latino districts ahead of the midterms. Black and Latino voters tend to support Democratic candidates.
That decision prompted several Republican-led states to pursue redrawn electoral maps ahead of the midterms in an effort to put at risk U.S. House seats considered safely Democratic-held.
Tuesday was the final day of rulings for the court’s current term, which began in October.
(Reporting by John Kruzel; Additional reporting by Jason Lange; Editing by Will Dunham)
Comments