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

6 

MCCUTCHEON v. FEDERAL ELECTION COMM’N 

Opinion of ROBERTS, C. J. 

party committees but foreclosed by the aggregate limit on 
contributions to political committees.

In  June  2012,  McCutcheon  and  the  RNC  filed  a  com-
plaint  before  a  three-judge  panel  of  the  U. S.  District 
Court for the District of Columbia.  See BCRA §403(a), 116
Stat.  113–114.    McCutcheon  and  the  RNC  asserted  that 
the aggregate limits on contributions to candidates and to 
noncandidate  political  committees  were  unconstitutional 
under  the  First  Amendment.  They  moved  for  a  prelimi-
nary  injunction  against  enforcement  of  the  challenged 
provisions,  and  the  Government  moved  to  dismiss  the 
case. 

The  three-judge  District  Court  denied  appellants’  mo-
tion for a preliminary injunction and granted the Govern-
ment’s  motion  to  dismiss.  Assuming  that  the  base  limits 
appropriately  served  the  Government’s  anticorruption 
interest,  the  District  Court  concluded  that  the  aggregate
limits  survived  First  Amendment  scrutiny  because  they
prevented evasion of the base limits.  893 F. Supp. 2d 133, 
140 (2012).

In particular, the District Court imagined a hypothetical
scenario  that  might  occur  in  a  world  without  aggregate
limits.  A  single  donor  might  contribute  the  maximum
amount  under  the  base  limits  to  nearly  50  separate  com-
mittees,  each  of  which  might  then  transfer  the  money  to 
the  same  single  committee.    Ibid.    That  committee,  in 
turn, might use all the transferred money for coordinated
expenditures on behalf of a particular candidate, allowing 
the  single  donor  to  circumvent  the  base  limit  on  the 
amount  he  may  contribute  to  that  candidate.    Ibid.  The 
District  Court  acknowledged  that  “it  may  seem  unlikely
that  so  many  separate  entities  would  willingly  serve  as 
conduits” for the single donor’s interests, but it concluded
that  such  a  scenario  “is  not  hard  to  imagine.”    Ibid.  It 
thus  rejected  a  constitutional  challenge  to  the  aggregate 
limits,  characterizing  the  base  limits  and  the  aggregate