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FEDERAL ELECTION COMM’N v. AKINS

Opinion of the Court

144–146, 170–171.
In particular, the FEC thought that
many of the persons who belonged to AIPAC lacked sufﬁ-
cient control of the organization’s policies to qualify as “mem-
bers” for purposes of the Act.

A few months later, however, the Court of Appeals over-
turned the FEC’s regulations deﬁning “members,” in part
because that court thought the regulations deﬁned mem-
bership organizations too narrowly in light of an organiza-
tion’s “First Amendment right to communicate with its
‘members.’ ” Chamber of Commerce v. Federal Election
Comm’n, 69 F. 3d 600, 605 (CADC 1995). The FEC has
subsequently issued proposed rules redeﬁning “members.”
Under these rules, it is quite possible that many of the per-
sons who belong to AIPAC would be considered “members.”
If so, the communications here at issue apparently would not
count as the kind of “expenditures” that can turn an organi-
zation into a “political committee,” and AIPAC would fall
outside the deﬁnition for that reason, rather than because of
the “major purpose” test.
62 Fed. Reg. 66832 (1997) (pro-
posed 11 CFR pts. 100 and 114).

The consequence for our consideration of Question Two
now is that the FEC’s new rules deﬁning “membership orga-
nization” could signiﬁcantly affect the interpretive issue pre-
sented by this question.
If the Court of Appeals is right in
saying that this Court’s narrowing interpretation of “politi-
cal committee” in Buckley reﬂected First Amendment con-
cerns, 101 F. 3d, at 741, then whether the “membership com-
munications” exception is interpreted broadly or narrowly
could affect our evaluation of the Court of Appeals’ claim
that there is no constitutionally driven need to apply Buck-
ley’s narrowing interpretation in this context. The scope of
the “membership communications” exception could also af-
fect our evaluation of the Solicitor General’s related argu-
ment that First Amendment concerns (reﬂected in Buckley’s
narrowing interpretation) are present whenever the Act re-
In any event, it is difﬁcult to decide the
quires disclosure.