Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/558bv.pdf
Page Number: 602.0

Cite as: 558 U. S. 310 (2010) 

441 

Opinion of Stevens, J. 

“a constitutionally sufﬁcient opportunity to engage in” inde­
pendent expenditures.  540 U. S., at 203. 

3.  Buckley and Bellotti 

Against  this  extensive  background  of  congressional  reg­
ulation  of  corporate  campaign  spending,  and  our  repeated 
afﬁrmation  of  this  regulation  as  constitutionally  sound,  the 
majority  dismisses  Austin  as  “a  signiﬁcant  departure  from 
ancient  First  Amendment  principles,”  ante,  at  319  (internal 
quotation  marks  omitted).  How  does  the  majority  attempt 
to  justify  this  claim?  Selected  passages  from  two  cases, 
Buckley, 424 U. S. 1, and Bellotti, 435 U. S. 765, do all of the 
work.  In  the  Court’s  view,  Buckley  and  Bellotti  decisively 
rejected  the  possibility  of  distinguishing  corporations  from 
natural persons in the 1970’s; it just so happens that in every 
single  case  in  which  the  Court  has  reviewed  campaign  ﬁ­
nance  legislation in  the  decades since,  the  majority failed  to 
grasp this truth.  The Federal Congress and dozens of state 
legislatures, we now know, have been similarly deluded. 

The majority emphasizes Buckley’s statement that “ ‘[t]he 
concept  that  government  may  restrict  the  speech  of  some 
elements of our society in order to enhance the relative voice 
of  others  is  wholly  foreign  to  the  First  Amendment.’ ” 
Ante,  at  349–350  (quoting  424  U. S.,  at  48–49);  ante,  at  379 
(opinion of Roberts, C. J.).  But this elegant phrase cannot 
bear  the  weight  that  our  colleagues  have  placed  on  it.  For 
one  thing,  the  Constitution  does,  in  fact,  permit  numerous 
“restrictions on the speech of some in order to prevent a few 
from  drowning  out  the  many”:  for  example,  restrictions  on 
ballot access and on legislators’ ﬂoor time.  Nixon v.  Shrink 
Missouri  Government  PAC,  528  U. S.  377,  402  (2000) 
(Breyer,  J.,  concurring).  For  another,  the  Buckley  Court 
used  this  line  in  evaluating  “the  ancillary  governmental  in­
terest  in  equalizing  the  relative  ability  of  individuals  and 
groups  to  inﬂuence  the  outcome  of  elections.”  424  U. S., 
at  48.  It  is  not  apparent  why  this  is  relevant  to  the  case