Next case opinion ruling is for the campaign finance one, National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Commission.
The vote is 6-3. Kagan dissents, joined by Sotomayor and Jackson.
This was a challenge to a federal law that limits the amount of money that political parties can spend in coordination with a candidate for federal office. In 2001, in FEC v. Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee, the court upheld the limits by a vote of 5-4 – with Justice Clarence Thomas (the only member of that court now on the current court) writing for the dissent. When this case went to the court of appeals, it said, in essence, that the challengers had some good arguments, but that it was bound by the Supreme Court’s decision in the 2001 case. The Trump administration declined to defend the party-expenditure limits, so the justices appointed Roman Martinez, a former clerk to Chief Judge John Roberts and then-Judge Brett Kavanaugh, to do so.
The court holds that the law's "limits on political parties' coordinated expenditures violate the First Amendment."
The court also overruled its decision in the Colorado case.
Kavanaugh writes that its reasoning in that case "has been rejected by subsequent cases and is no longer good law in light of the court's more recent precedents. To the extent that Colorado II has retained any vitality, it is now overruled."
In her dissenting opinion, Kagan argues that the majority "jettisons a rule needed to protect our democracy's integrity."
She adds later that "To count on disclosure to prevent corruption is as much as to give up on the goal itself. Which is, sad to say, what this Court does today."
