Source: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/558/310/
Timestamp: 2018-04-26 05:59:59
Document Index: 302428575

Matched Legal Cases: ['§203', '§441', '§434', '§100', '§100', '§441', '§441', '§441', '§201', '§441', '§100', '§441', '§441', '§441', '§441', '§608', '§608', '§610', '§608', '§610', '§441', '§311', '§311', '§201', '§201', '§201']

Justia › US Law › US Case Law › US Supreme Court › Volume 558 › Citizens United v. Federal Election Comm'n › Syllabus
As amended by §203 of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (BCRA), federal law prohibits corporations and unions from using their general treasury funds to make independent expenditures for speech that is an “electioneering communication” or for speech that expressly advocates the election or defeat of a candidate. 2 U. S. C. §441b. An electioneering communication is “any broadcast, cable, or satellite communication” that “refers to a clearly identified candidate for Federal office” and is made within 30 days of a primary election, §434(f)(3)(A), and that is “publicly distributed,” 11 CFR §100.29(a)(2), which in “the case of a candidate for nomination for President … means” that the communication “[c]an be received by 50,000 or more persons in a State where a primary election … is being held within 30 days,” §100.29(b)(3)(ii). Corporations and unions may establish a political action committee (PAC) for express advocacy or electioneering communications purposes. 2 U. S. C. §441b(b)(2). In McConnell v. Federal Election Comm’n, 540 U. S. 93, 203–209, this Court upheld limits on electioneering communications in a facial challenge, relying on the holding in Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, 494 U. S. 652, that political speech may be banned based on the speaker’s corporate identity.
In January 2008, appellant Citizens United, a nonprofit corporation, released a documentary (hereinafter Hillary) critical of then-Senator Hillary Clinton, a candidate for her party’s Presidential nomination. Anticipating that it would make Hillary available on cable television through video-on-demand within 30 days of primary elections, Citizens United produced television ads to run on broadcast and cable television. Concerned about possible civil and criminal penalties for violating §441b, it sought declaratory and injunctive relief, arguing that (1) §441b is unconstitutional as applied to Hillary; and (2) BCRA’s disclaimer, disclosure, and reporting requirements, BCRA §§201 and 311, were unconstitutional as applied to Hillary and the ads. The District Court denied Citizens United a preliminary injunction and granted appellee Federal Election Commission (FEC) summary judgment.
(a) Citizen United’s narrower arguments—that Hillary is not an “electioneering communication” covered by §441b because it is not “publicly distributed” under 11 CFR §100.29(a)(2); that §441b may not be applied to Hillary under Federal Election Comm’n v. Wisconsin Right to Life, Inc., 551 U. S. 449 (WRTL), which found §441b unconstitutional as applied to speech that was not “express advocacy or its functional equivalent,” id., at 481 (opinion of Roberts, C. J.), determining that a communication “is the functional equivalent of express advocacy only if [it] is susceptible of no reasonable interpretation other than as an appeal to vote for or against a specific candidate,” id., at 469–470; that §441b should be invalidated as applied to movies shown through video-on-demand because this delivery system has a lower risk of distorting the political process than do television ads; and that there should be an exception to §441b’s ban for nonprofit corporate political speech funded overwhelming by individuals—are not sustainable under a fair reading of the statute. Pp. 5–12.
(b) The Court has recognized that the First Amendment applies to corporations, e.g., First Nat. Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, 435 U. S. 765, 778, n. 14, and extended this protection to the context of political speech, see, e.g., NAACP v. Button, 371 U. S. 415, 428–429. Addressing challenges to the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971, the Buckley Court upheld limits on direct contributions to candidates, 18 U. S. C. §608(b), recognizing a governmental interest in preventing quid pro quo corruption. 424 U. S., at 25–26. However, the Court invalidated §608(e)’s expenditure ban, which applied to individuals, corporations, and unions, because it “fail[ed] to serve any substantial governmental interest in stemming the reality or appearance of corruption in the electoral process,” id., at 47–48. While Buckley did not consider a separate ban on corporate and union independent expenditures found in §610, had that provision been challenged in Buckley’s wake, it could not have been squared with the precedent’s reasoning and analysis. The Buckley Court did not invoke the overbreadth doctrine to suggest that §608(e)’s expenditure ban would have been constitutional had it applied to corporations and unions but not individuals. Notwithstanding this precedent, Congress soon recodified §610’s corporate and union expenditure ban at 2 U. S. C. §441b, the provision at issue. Less than two years after Buckley, Bellotti reaffirmed the First Amendment principle that the Government lacks the power to restrict political speech based on the speaker’s corporate identity. 435 U.S., at 784–785. Thus the law stood until Austin upheld a corporate independent expenditure restriction, bypassing Buckley and Bellotti by recognizing a new governmental interest in preventing “the corrosive and distorting effects of immense aggregations of [corporate] wealth … that have little or no correlation to the public’s support for the corporation’s political ideas.” 494 U. S., at 660. Pp. 25–32.
(b) The disclaimer and disclosure requirements are valid as applied to Citizens United’s ads. They fall within BCRA’s “electioneering communication” definition: They referred to then-Senator Clinton by name shortly before a primary and contained pejorative references to her candidacy. Section 311 disclaimers provide information to the electorate, McConnell, supra, at 196, and “insure that the voters are fully informed” about who is speaking, Buckley, supra, at 76. At the very least, they avoid confusion by making clear that the ads are not funded by a candidate or political party. Citizens United’s arguments that §311 is underinclusive because it requires disclaimers for broadcast advertisements but not for print or Internet advertising and that §311 decreases the quantity and effectiveness of the group’s speech were rejected in McConnell. This Court also rejects their contention that §201’s disclosure requirements must be confined to speech that is the functional equivalent of express advocacy under WRTL’s test for restrictions on independent expenditures, 551 U. S., at 469–476 (opinion of Roberts, C.J.). Disclosure is the less-restrictive alternative to more comprehensive speech regulations. Such requirements have been upheld in Buckley and McConnell. Citizens United’s argument that no informational interest justifies applying §201 to its ads is similar to the argument this Court rejected with regard to disclaimers. Citizens United finally claims that disclosure requirements can chill donations by exposing donors to retaliation, but offers no evidence that its members face the type of threats, harassment, or reprisals that might make §201 unconstitutional as applied. Pp. 52–55.
Limiting independent expenditures on political campaigns by groups such as corporations, labor unions, or other collective entities violates the First Amendment, in part because corporations should be considered as people and their money counts as speech.
In 2004, conservative nonprofit organization Citizens United brought a complaint to the Federal Election Commission regarding Michael Moore's film Fahrenheit 9/11, a documentary that discussed the events of September 11, 2001 from a perspective unfavorable to George W. Bush. They argued that the advertisements for the film were political advertising, which would bring them within the restrictions of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act. This law had amended the Federal Election Campaign Act to forbid corporations from funding broadcast advertisements mentioning a candidate 30 days before a primary election or 60 days before a general election. (Bush was running for president again as the incumbent.) The FEC found a lack of evidence to support the allegations and dismissed the complaint, as well as a later complaint alleging that the advertisements violated the Taft-Hartley Act.
Since the FEC stated that these rules did not apply to the bona fide production of films for commercial purposes, Citizens United remodeled itself to meet these criteria and began producing documentary films. One of these, a negative documentary on Senator and prospective presidential candidate Hillary Clinton known as Hillary: The Movie, was completed before the 2008 elections. Citizens United aimed to promote it on television and show the film as an on-demand offering on DirecTV. When a federal district court reviewed a challenge to these actions, it found that the advertisements for the documentary violated the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, since the film was essentially a negative commercial against Clinton despite its alleged presentation of objectively accurate facts about her.
US District Court for the District of Columbia - 530 F. Supp. 2d 274 (D.D.C. 2008)
Motion for preliminary injunction denied. The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act prevents Citizens United from advertising the movie or showing it on DirecTV in advance of the 2008 elections.
Building on Buckley v. Valeo, which held that spending money can be critical to exercising the freedom of speech, the majority also ruled that corporations have First Amendment rights and can spend money to exercise them. The Court overruled precedents that restricted political spending by unions and corporations during elections, finding that they were constitutionally permitted to support or oppose candidates, as long as they did not contribute to their campaigns or parties directly. As a result, the section of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act that banned independent expenditures by corporations and unions was unconstitutional. It appeared that the majority used a heightened standard of review, similar to strict scrutiny.
Kennedy noted that the government does not have the authority to level the playing field among speakers such that each speaker has equal access to the public. He used a vision of the First Amendment as protecting the marketplace of ideas from intrusion by the legislature, even if that intrusion was based on concerns of fairness. He was not persuaded that corporations would corrupt the marketplace of ideas by flooding it with speech that they supported because of their funding advantages. Kennedy felt that corruption was limited to quid pro quo exchanges and that all citizens should be able to make their own judgments on whether certain information is valuable, without having some information removed from the marketplace of ideas in advance.
However, the majority held that provisions of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act that required disclosure of who funded the speech were valid here, although they might not be valid in all instances.
Focusing on the scope of the judicial role and the principle of stare decisis, or adherence to precedent, Roberts reinforced the majority's conviction that it could overrule prior decisions without threatening these well-established principles. His concurrence seemed to function as a pre-emptive defense to criticisms that the Court's jurisprudence in this area was inconsistent.
Although he also joined the majority opinion, Scalia wrote separately to confront the arguments in the dissenting opinion by Justice Stevens. He felt the need to defend his textualist approach against Stevens' originalist approach, which he felt relied too heavily on the historical context rather than the plain meaning of the document. He also observed that corporations should not be divided into media and non-media classifications, based on his understanding of the Free Press Clause as applying to all written materials rather than the organized press.
Thomas would have gone further than the majority and invalidated the disclosure requirements of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act as well. He felt that anonymity was important in encouraging people to contribute to entities engaging in political speech. Fearing the possibility of retaliation, according to Thomas, could chill speech before it occurred, as had been the case in the California initiative process. While the majority found that these provisions could be challenged on an as-applied basis, he did not believe this protection was sufficient.
While Stevens agreed that the disclosure provisions of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act were constitutional, he found that the other provisions also should be upheld. At least, they should not be struck down on a facial basis. Stevens conceded that they might be invalid on a case-by-case basis, following further factual investigation. After a close reading of Buckley v. Valeo, he found that it permitted the possibility of restricting campaign spending to limit corruption, which it recognized as a valid goal. He pointed out that the majority had diverged from the vast majority of the Court's previous jurisprudence in this area, relying largely on dissenting opinions.
Stevens argued for a broader understanding of corruption than limiting it to quid pro quo exchanges like bribes or buying votes. He foresaw the possibility of special interests gaining a higher level of political access and essentially blackmailing politicians into pursuing their objectives by threatening them with advertising attacks. Stevens also noted that it was important not only to prevent corruption but to prevent the appearance of corruption for a democracy to function effectively, since people otherwise would lose confidence in the election process. (This was supported by empirical research on public opinion regarding political spending by corporations.)
Rejecting the theory that a corporation is a person, Stevens asserted that it is different in many critical respects, including having no voting ability, no individual morality or loyalty concerns, and eternal life. People who are members of corporations still can exercise their individual speech rights, and a corporation was nothing more than a collection of people to him. In fact, he argued that permitting them to exercise such a sweeping set of free speech rights infringed on the rights of their shareholders, who might not agree with what the board chose to support. He found that a derivative suit was an unwieldy, complicated way of challenging a corporation's political expenditures that might not have an effect until it was too late.
Although Stevens shared the majority's respect for the marketplace of ideas concept, he felt that the marketplace could be threatened by being saturated with a certain viewpoint. By dominating the discussion, corporations could give the impression that their viewpoints were widely supported, which would encourage people to accept them. He was not concerned that censorship would result from upholding the provisions, since they could be challenged on a case-by-case basis, and he feared that the Court had exceeded the scope of the judicial role by severely limiting the ability of the legislature to fight corruption during the election process.
There was a wide range of intense reactions to the decision, which was viewed as a watershed moment in First Amendment jurisprudence. While judges and legal scholars were mixed in their responses, the American public largely disagreed with the decision, which was somewhat ironic in view of the majority's belief that it was attempting to protect their access to information. Polls suggested that Congress should take action to override the decision and restore limits to political spending by corporations and unions. It is intriguing to note that popular criticism for Citizens United came from both sides of the partisan divide. While some conservatives supported the decision, many of them opposed it. The media industry and international observers were also generally critical of the Court.