Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/13pdf/12-536_e1pf.pdf
Page Number: 5.0

Cite as:  572 U. S. ____ (2014) 

5 

Syllabus 

Importantly, there are multiple alternatives available to Congress
that would serve the Government’s interest in preventing circumven-
tion  while  avoiding  “unnecessary  abridgment”  of  First  Amendment 
rights.    Buckley,  supra,  at  25.    Such  alternatives  might  include  tar-
geted  restrictions  on  transfers  among  candidates  and  political  com-
mittees, or tighter earmarking rules.  Transfers, after all, are the key 
to  the  Government’s  concern  about  circumvention,  but  they  can  be
addressed  without  such  a  direct  and  broad  interference  with  First 
Amendment rights.  Pp. 30–35.

(4) Disclosure  of  contributions  also  reduces  the  potential  for 
abuse  of  the  campaign  finance  system.
  Disclosure  requirements,
which  are  justified  by  “a  governmental  interest  in  ‘provid[ing]  the
electorate  with  information’  about  the  sources  of  election-related 
spending,”  Citizens  United,  supra,  at  367,  may  deter  corruption  “by 
exposing large contributions and expenditures to the light of publici-
ty,”  Buckley,  supra  at  67.    Disclosure  requirements  may  burden
speech,  but  they  often  represent  a  less  restrictive  alternative  to  flat
bans on certain types or quantities of speech.  Particularly with mod-
ern technology, disclosure now offers more robust protections against 
corruption than it did when Buckley was decided.  Pp. 35–36.

(d) The Government offers an additional rationale for the aggregate
limits, arguing that the opportunity for corruption exists whenever a 
legislator is given a large check, even if the check consists of contri-
butions within the base limits to be divided among numerous candi-
dates  or  committees.    That  rationale  dangerously  broadens  the  cir-
cumscribed definition of quid pro quo corruption articulated in prior 
cases.  Buckley  confined  its  analysis  to  the  possibility  that  “massive
amounts of money” could be funneled to a particular candidate in ex-
cess  of  the  base  limits.    424  U. S.,  at  38.    Recasting  as  corruption  a 
donor’s widely distributed support for a political party would dramat-
ically  expand  government  regulation  of  the  political  process.    And 
though  the  Government  suggests  that  solicitation  of  large  contribu-
tions  poses  the  corruption  danger,  the  aggregate  limits  are  not  lim-
ited to any direct solicitation by an officeholder or candidate.  Pp. 36– 
39.

 JUSTICE THOMAS agreed that the aggregate limits are invalid under 
the First Amendment, but would overrule Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U. S. 
1, and subject BCRA’s aggregate limits to strict scrutiny, which they 
would  surely  fail.  Buckley’s  “analytic  foundation  . . .  was  tenuous
from the very beginning and has only continued to erode in the inter-
vening years.”  Nixon v. Shrink Missouri Government PAC, 528 U. S. 
377,  412  (THOMAS,  J.,  dissenting).    Contributions  and  expenditures 
are  simply  “two  sides  of  the  same  First  Amendment  coin,”  and  this
Court’s  efforts  to  distinguish  the  two  have  produced  mere  “word