Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/558bv.pdf
Page Number: 526.0

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

365 

Opinion of the Court 

No  serious  reliance  interests  are  at  stake.  As  the  Court 
stated  in  Payne  v.  Tennessee,  501  U. S.  808,  828  (1991),  reli­
ance  interests  are  important  considerations  in  property  and 
contract cases, where parties may have acted in conformance 
with  existing  legal  rules  in  order  to  conduct  transactions. 
Here,  though,  parties  have  been  prevented  from  acting— 
corporations  have  been  banned  from  making  independent 
expenditures.  Legislatures  may  have  enacted  bans  on  cor­
porate  expenditures  believing  that  those  bans  were  con­
stitutional.  This  is  not  a  compelling  interest  for  stare 
decisis.  If  it  were,  legislative  acts  could  prevent  us  from 
overruling our own precedents, thereby interfering with our 
duty  “to  say  what  the  law  is.”  Marbury  v.  Madison,  1 
Cranch 137, 177 (1803). 

Due  consideration  leads  to  this  conclusion:  Austin,  494 
U. S.  652,  should  be  and  now  is  overruled.  We  return  to 
the  principle  established  in  Buckley  and  Bellotti  that  the 
Government  may  not  suppress  political  speech  on  the  basis 
of  the  speaker’s  corporate  identity.  No  sufﬁcient  govern­
mental interest justiﬁes limits on the political speech of non­
proﬁt or for-proﬁt corporations. 

D 

Austin  is  overruled,  so  it  provides  no  basis  for  allowing 
the  Government  to  limit  corporate  independent  expendi­
tures.  As  the  Government  appears  to  concede,  overruling 
Austin “effectively invalidate[s] not only BCRA Section 203, 
but also 2  U. S. C. 441b’s prohibition on the  use of corporate 
treasury funds for express advocacy.”  Brief for Appellee 33, 
n.  12.  Section  441b’s  restrictions  on  corporate  independent 
expenditures  are  therefore  invalid  and  cannot  be  applied  to 
Hillary. 

Given  our  conclusion  we  are  further  required  to  overrule 
the part of McConnell that upheld BCRA § 203’s extension of 
§ 441b’s  restrictions  on  corporate  independent  expenditures. 
See  540  U. S.,  at  203–209.  The  McConnell  Court  relied  on