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350  CITIZENS  UNITED  v.  FEDERAL  ELECTION  COMM’N 

Opinion of the Court 

hance  the  relative  voice  of  others  is  wholly  foreign  to  the 
First  Amendment”);  Automobile  Workers,  supra,  at  597 
(Douglas,  J.,  dissenting);  CIO,  335  U. S.,  at  154–155  (Rut­
ledge, J., concurring in result).  This protection for speech is 
inconsistent  with  Austin’s  antidistortion  rationale.  Austin 
sought  to  defend  the  antidistortion  rationale  as  a  means  to 
prevent  corporations  from  obtaining  “ ‘an  unfair  advantage 
in  the  political  marketplace’ ”  by  using  “ ‘resources  amassed 
in  the  economic  marketplace.’ ”  494  U. S.,  at  659  (quoting 
MCFL,  supra,  at  257).  But  Buckley  rejected  the  premise 
that the Government has an interest “in equalizing the rela­
tive  ability  of  individuals  and  groups  to  inﬂuence  the  out­
come  of  elections.”  424  U. S.,  at  48;  see  Bellotti,  supra, 
at  791,  n.  30.  Buckley  was  speciﬁc  in  stating  that  “the 
skyrocketing  cost  of  political  campaigns”  could  not  sustain 
the  governmental  prohibition.  424  U. S.,  at  26.  The  First 
Amendment’s  protections  do  not  depend  on  the  speaker’s 
“ﬁnancial ability to engage in public discussion.”  Id., at 49. 
The  Court  reafﬁrmed  these  conclusions  when  it  invali­
dated  the  BCRA  provision  that  increased  the  cap  on  con­
tributions  to  one  candidate  if  the  opponent  made  certain 
expenditures  from  personal  funds.  See  Davis  v.  Federal 
Election  Comm’n,  554  U. S.  724,  742  (2008)  (“Leveling  elec­
toral  opportunities  means  making  and  implementing  judg­
ments  about  which  strengths  should  be  permitted  to  con­
tribute  to  the  outcome  of  an  election.  The  Constitution, 
however,  confers  upon  voters,  not  Congress,  the  power  to 
choose the Members of the House of Representatives, Art. I, 
§ 2,  and  it  is  a  dangerous  business  for  Congress  to  use  the 
election  laws  to  inﬂuence  the  voters’  choices”).  The  rule 
that  political  speech  cannot  be  limited  based  on  a  speaker’s 
wealth  is  a  necessary  consequence  of  the  premise  that  the 
First Amendment generally prohibits the suppression of po­
litical speech based on the speaker’s identity. 

Either  as  support  for  its  antidistortion  rationale  or  as  a 
further  argument,  the  Austin  majority  undertook  to  distin­