Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/524bv.pdf
Page Number: 62

524US1

Unit: $U72

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Cite as: 524 U. S. 11 (1998)

17

Opinion of the Court

to communications by a membership organization with its
members, App. 164–166, which the Act exempts from its
deﬁnition of “expenditures,” § 431(9)(B)(iii).
In AIPAC’s
view, these communications therefore did not violate § 441b’s
corporate expenditure prohibition.
2 Record, Doc. No. 19,
if AIPAC was right, those expenditures
pp. 2–6.
would not count toward the $1,000 ceiling on “expenditures”
that might transform an ordinary issue-related group into a
“political committee.”

§ 431(4).)

(And,

The FEC’s General Counsel concluded that, between 1983
and 1988, AIPAC had indeed funded communications of the
sort described. The General Counsel said that those ex-
penditures were campaign related, in that they amounted to
advocating the election or defeat of particular candidates.
App. 106–108. He added that these expenditures were
“likely to have crossed the $1,000 threshold.”
Id., at 146.
At the same time, the FEC closed the door to AIPAC’s invo-
cation of the “communications” exception. The FEC said
that, although it was a “close question,” these expenditures
were not membership communications, because that excep-
tion applies to a membership organization’s communications
with its members, and most of the persons who belonged to
AIPAC did not qualify as “members” for purposes of the Act.
App. to Pet. for Cert. 97a–98a; see also App. 170–173. Still,
given the closeness of the issue, the FEC exercised its dis-
cretion and decided not to proceed further with respect to
the claimed “corporate contribution” violation. App. to Pet.
for Cert. 98a.

The FEC’s determination that many of the persons who
belonged to AIPAC were not “members” effectively fore-
closed any claim that AIPAC’s communications did not count
as “expenditures” for purposes of determining whether
it was a “political committee.” Since AIPAC’s activities
fell outside the “membership communications” exception,
AIPAC could not invoke that exception as a way of escaping