Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/13pdf/12-536_e1pf.pdf
Page Number: 35.0

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

29 

Opinion of ROBERTS, C. J. 

to prove, pointing to eight FEC cases that did not proceed
because of insufficient evidence of a donor’s incriminating
knowledge.    See  post,  at  24–25.    It  might  be  that  such 
guilty  knowledge  could  not  be  shown  because  the  donors
were  not  guilty—a  possibility  that  the  dissent  does  not 
entertain.  In  any  event,  the  donors  described  in  those 
eight  cases  were  typically  alleged  to  have  exceeded  the 
base limits by $5,000 or less.  The FEC’s failure to find the 
requisite knowledge in those cases hardly means that the 
agency  will  be  equally  powerless  to  prevent  a  scheme  in
which  a  donor  routes  millions  of  dollars  in  excess  of  the 
base  limits  to  a  particular  candidate,  as  in  the  dissent’s 
“Example  Two.”  And  if  an  FEC  official  cannot  establish 
knowledge of circumvention (or establish affiliation) when 
the same ten donors contribute $10,000 each to 200 newly
created PACs, and each PAC writes a $10,000 check to the 
same  ten  candidates—the  dissent’s  “Example  Three”—
then that official has not a heart but a head of stone.  See 
post, at 19–20, 25. 

The  dissent  concludes  by  citing  three  briefs  for  the 
proposition  that,  even  with  the  aggregate  limits  in  place, 
individuals  “have  transferred  large  sums  of  money  to 
specific  candidates”  in  excess  of  the  base  limits.    Post,  at 
26.  But  the  cited  sources  do  not  provide  any  real-world
examples  of  circumvention  of  the  base  limits  along  the 
lines  of  the  various  hypotheticals.    The  dearth  of  FEC 
prosecutions,  according  to  the  dissent,  proves  only  that
people  are  getting  away  with  it.    And  the  violations  that 
surely  must  be  out  there  elude  detection  “because  in  the
real  world,  the  methods  of  achieving  circumvention  are
more  subtle  and  more  complex”  than  the  hypothetical
examples.  Ibid.  This sort of speculation, however, cannot
justify  the  substantial  intrusion  on  First  Amendment 
rights at issue in this case. 

Buckley upheld aggregate limits only on the ground that
they  prevented  channeling  money  to  candidates  beyond