Federal Election Commission v Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee, 00191

• Court: United States Supreme Court
• Writing for the Court: Souter
• Citation: 121 S.Ct. 2351,533 U.S. 431,150 L.Ed.2d 461
• Parties: FEDERAL ELECTION COMMISSION, PETITIONER v. COLORADO REPUBLICAN FEDERAL CAMPAIGN COMMITTEE 00-191 SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
• Docket Number: 00191
• Decision Date: 25 June 2001

533 U.S. 431
121 S.Ct. 2351
150 L.Ed.2d 461

NOTICE: This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in the preliminary print of the United States Reports. Readers are requested to notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of the United States, Washington, D. C. 20543, of any typographical or other formal errors, in order that corrections may be made before the preliminary print goes to press.

FEDERAL ELECTION COMMISSION, PETITIONER
v.
COLORADO REPUBLICAN FEDERAL CAMPAIGN COMMITTEE

00-191

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES

Argued February 28, 2001
June 25, 2001

Syllabus

In Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1, 12-59, this Court held that the limitations on political campaign contributions in the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 were generally constitutional, but that the Act's limitations on election expenditures infringed political expression in violation of the First Amendment. Later cases have respected this line between contributing and spending. The distinction's simplicity is qualified, however, by the Act's provision for a functional, not formal, definition of "contribution," which includes "expenditures made by any person in cooperation, consultation, or concert, with a candidate," 2 U.S.C. § 441a(a)(7)(B)(i). Thus, expenditures coordinated with a candidate are contributions under the Act. The Federal Election Commission (FEC) originally took the position that any expenditure by a political party in connection with a federal election was presumed to be coordinated with the party's candidate. See, e.g., Federal Election Comm'n v. Democratic Senatorial Campaign Comm., 454 U.S. 27, 28-29, n. 1. The FEC thus assumed that all expenditure limits imposed on political parties were, in essence, contribution limits and therefore constitutional. Such limits include §441a(d)(3), which imposes spending limits on national and state political parties with respect to United States Senate elections. In Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Comm. v. Federal Election Comm'n, 518 U.S. 604 (Colorado I), the spending limits in §441a(d)(3) (referred to as the Party Expenditure Provision), were held unconstitutional as applied to the independent expenditures of the Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee (Party) in connection with a senatorial campaign. The principal opinion ruled the payments "independent, " rather than coordinated, expenditures under this Court's cases because the Party spent the money before selecting its own senatorial candidate and without any arrangement with potential nominees. Id., at 613-614. The principal opinion remanded the Party's broader claim that all limits on a party's congressional campaign expenditures are facially unconstitutional and thus unenforceable even as to spending coordinated with a candidate. Id., at 623-626. On remand, the District Court held for the Party on that claim, and a divided Tenth Circuit panel affirmed.


Held: Because a party's coordinated expenditures, unlike expenditures truly independent, may be restricted to minimize circumvention of the Act's contribution limits, the Party's facial challenge is rejected. Pp. 4-30.

(a) Political expenditure limits deserve closer scrutiny than contribution restrictions, e.g., Buckley, 424 U.S., at 14-23, because expenditure restraints generally curb more expressive and associational activity than contribution limits, e.g., id., at 19-23, and because unlimited contributions are more clearly linked to political corruption than other kinds of unlimited political spending, at least where the spending is not coordinated with a candidate or his campaign. E.g., id., at 47. Although the First Amendment line is easy to draw when it falls between independent expenditures by individuals or political action committees (PACs) without any candidate's approval and contributions in the form of cash gifts to candidates, see, e.g., id., at 19-23, facts speak less clearly once the independence of the spending cannot be taken for granted. Congress's functional treatment of coordinated expenditures by individuals and nonparty groups like contributions prevents attempts to circumvent the Act through coordinated expenditures amounting to disguised contributions. Id., at 47. Buckley, in fact, enhanced the significance of this functional treatment by striking down independent expenditure limits on First Amendment grounds while upholding limitations on contributions (by individuals and nonparty groups), as defined to include coordinated expenditures. Id., at 23-59. Colorado I addressed the FEC's effort to stretch the functional treatment one step further. Because Buckley had treated some coordinated expenditures like contributions and upheld their limitation, the FEC's argument went, the Party Expenditure Provision should stand as applied to all party election spending, see, e.g., 518 U.S., at 619-623. Holding otherwise, the principal opinion found that, because "independent" party expenditures are no more likely to serve corruption than independent expenditures by anyone else, there was no justification for subjecting party election spending across the board to the kinds of limits previously invalidated when applied to individuals and nonparty groups. See id., at 616. But that still left the question whether the First Amendment allows coordinated election expenditures by parties to be treated functionally as contributions, the way coordinated expenditures by other entities are treated. The issue in this case is, accordingly, whether a party is in a different position from other political speakers, giving it a claim to demand a higher standard of scrutiny before its coordinated spending can be limited. Pp. 4-9.

(b) The Party's argument that its coordinated spending, like its independent spending, should be left free from restriction under the Buckley line of cases boils down to this: because a party's most important speech is aimed at electing candidates and is itself expressed through those candidates, any limit on party support for a candidate imposes a unique First Amendment burden. Limitation of any party expenditure coordinated with a candidate, the Party contends, is therefore a serious, rather than incidental, imposition on the party's speech and associative purpose, which justifies a stricter level of scrutiny than has been applied to analogous limits on individuals and nonparty groups. But whatever level of scrutiny is applied to such a limit, the Party argues, the burden on a party reflects a fatal mismatch between the effects of limiting coordinated party expenditures and the prevention of corruption or its appearance. In contrast, the Government's argument for characterizing coordinated spending like contributions goes back to Buckley, which, in effect, subjected limits on coordinated expenditures by individuals and nonparty groups to the same scrutiny it applied to limits on their cash contributions. The standard of scrutiny requires the limit to be closely drawn to match a sufficiently important interest, though the limit's dollar amount need not be fine tuned. See, e.g., Buckley, supra, at 25, 30. The Government develops this rationale a step further here, arguing that a party's coordinated spending should be limited not only because it is like a party contribution, but because giving a party the right to make unlimited coordinated expenditures would induce those wishing to support a nominee to contribute to the party in order to finance coordinated spending for that candidate, thereby increasing circumvention and bypassing the limits Buckley upheld. Pp. 9-12.

(c) Although each of the competing positions is plausible at first blush, evaluation of the arguments prompts rejection of the Party's claim to suffer a burden unique in any way that should make a categorical difference under the First Amendment. And the Government's contentions are ultimately borne out by evidence, entitling it to prevail in its characterization of party coordinated spending as the functional equivalent of contributions. Pp. 12-25.

(1) The Party's argument that unrestricted coordinated spending is essential to a party's nature because of its unique relationship with candidates, has been rendered implausible by nearly 30 years' history under the Act. Since 1974, a party's coordinated spending in a given race has been limited by the provision challenged here (or its predecessor). It was not until the 1996 Colorado I decision that any spending was allowed above that amount, and since then only independent spending has been unlimited. Thus, the Party's claim that coordinated spending beyond the Act's limit is essential to its very function as a party amounts implicitly to saying that for almost three decades political parties have not been quite functional or have been functioning in systematic violation of the law. The Court cannot accept either implication. Pp. 13-15.

(2) There is a different weakness in the seemingly unexceptionable premise that parties are organized for the purpose of electing candidates, so that imposing on the way parties serve that function is uniquely burdensome. The fault here is a refusal to see how the power of money actually works in the political structure. Looking directly at a party's function in getting and spending money, it would ignore reality to think that the party role is adequately described by speaking generally of electing particular candidates. Parties are necessarily the instruments of some contributors, such as PACs, whose object is not to support the party's message or to elect party candidates, but rather to support a specific candidate for the sake of a position on one, narrow issue, or even to support any candidate who will be obliged to contributors. Parties thus perform functions more complex than simply electing their candidates: they act as agents for spending on behalf of those who seek to produce obligated officeholders. It is this party role, which...