Source: http://openjurist.org/print/39624
Timestamp: 2015-10-06 19:08:06
Document Index: 66088848

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 441', '§441', '§441', '§441', '§ 441', '§ 441', '§441', '§441', '§441', '§ 441']

533 US 431 Federal Election Commission v. Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee
Home > 533 US 431 Federal Election Commission v. Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee
533 US 431 Federal Election Commission v. Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee 533 U.S. 431121 S.Ct. 2351150 L.Ed.2d 461
FEDERAL ELECTION COMMISSION, PETITIONERv.COLORADO REPUBLICAN FEDERAL CAMPAIGN COMMITTEE
Argued February 28, 2001June 25, 2001
In Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1, 12-59, this Court held that the limitations on political campaign contributions in the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 were generally constitutional, but that the Act's limitations on election expenditures infringed political expression in violation of the First Amendment. Later cases have respected this line between contributing and spending. The distinction's simplicity is qualified, however, by the Act's provision for a functional, not formal, definition of "contribution," which includes "expenditures made by any person in cooperation, consultation, or concert, with a candidate," 2 U.S.C. § 441a(a)(7)(B)(i). Thus, expenditures coordinated with a candidate are contributions under the Act. The Federal Election Commission (FEC) originally took the position that any expenditure by a political party in connection with a federal election was presumed to be coordinated with the party's candidate. See, e.g., Federal Election Comm'n v. Democratic Senatorial Campaign Comm., 454 U.S. 27, 28-29, n. 1. The FEC thus assumed that all expenditure limits imposed on political parties were, in essence, contribution limits and therefore constitutional. Such limits include §441a(d)(3), which imposes spending limits on national and state political parties with respect to United States Senate elections. In Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Comm. v. Federal Election Comm'n, 518 U.S. 604 (Colorado I), the spending limits in §441a(d)(3) (referred to as the Party Expenditure Provision), were held unconstitutional as applied to the independent expenditures of the Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee (Party) in connection with a senatorial campaign. The principal opinion ruled the payments "independent, " rather than coordinated, expenditures under this Court's cases because the Party spent the money before selecting its own senatorial candidate and without any arrangement with potential nominees. Id., at 613-614. The principal opinion remanded the Party's broader claim that all limits on a party's congressional campaign expenditures are facially unconstitutional and thus unenforceable even as to spending coordinated with a candidate. Id., at 623-626. On remand, the District Court held for the Party on that claim, and a divided Tenth Circuit panel affirmed.
Held: Because a party's coordinated expenditures, unlike expenditures truly independent, may be restricted to minimize circumvention of the Act's contribution limits, the Party's facial challenge is rejected. Pp. 4-30.
(a) Political expenditure limits deserve closer scrutiny than contribution restrictions, e.g., Buckley, 424 U.S., at 14-23, because expenditure restraints generally curb more expressive and associational activity than contribution limits, e.g., id., at 19-23, and because unlimited contributions are more clearly linked to political corruption than other kinds of unlimited political spending, at least where the spending is not coordinated with a candidate or his campaign. E.g., id., at 47. Although the First Amendment line is easy to draw when it falls between independent expenditures by individuals or political action committees (PACs) without any candidate's approval and contributions in the form of cash gifts to candidates, see, e.g., id., at 19-23, facts speak less clearly once the independence of the spending cannot be taken for granted. Congress's functional treatment of coordinated expenditures by individuals and nonparty groups like contributions prevents attempts to circumvent the Act through coordinated expenditures amounting to disguised contributions. Id., at 47. Buckley, in fact, enhanced the significance of this functional treatment by striking down independent expenditure limits on First Amendment grounds while upholding limitations on contributions (by individuals and nonparty groups), as defined to include coordinated expenditures. Id., at 23-59. Colorado I addressed the FEC's effort to stretch the functional treatment one step further. Because Buckley had treated some coordinated expenditures like contributions and upheld their limitation, the FEC's argument went, the Party Expenditure Provision should stand as applied to all party election spending, see, e.g., 518 U.S., at 619-623. Holding otherwise, the principal opinion found that, because "independent" party expenditures are no more likely to serve corruption than independent expenditures by anyone else, there was no justification for subjecting party election spending across the board to the kinds of limits previously invalidated when applied to individuals and nonparty groups. See id., at 616. But that still left the question whether the First Amendment allows coordinated election expenditures by parties to be treated functionally as contributions, the way coordinated expenditures by other entities are treated. The issue in this case is, accordingly, whether a party is in a different position from other political speakers, giving it a claim to demand a higher standard of scrutiny before its coordinated spending can be limited. Pp. 4-9.
(b) The Party's argument that its coordinated spending, like its independent spending, should be left free from restriction under the Buckley line of cases boils down to this: because a party's most important speech is aimed at electing candidates and is itself expressed through those candidates, any limit on party support for a candidate imposes a unique First Amendment burden. Limitation of any party expenditure coordinated with a candidate, the Party contends, is therefore a serious, rather than incidental, imposition on the party's speech and associative purpose, which justifies a stricter level of scrutiny than has been applied to analogous limits on individuals and nonparty groups. But whatever level of scrutiny is applied to such a limit, the Party argues, the burden on a party reflects a fatal mismatch between the effects of limiting coordinated party expenditures and the prevention of corruption or its appearance. In contrast, the Government's argument for characterizing coordinated spending like contributions goes back to Buckley, which, in effect, subjected limits on coordinated expenditures by individuals and nonparty groups to the same scrutiny it applied to limits on their cash contributions. The standard of scrutiny requires the limit to be closely drawn to match a sufficiently important interest, though the limit's dollar amount need not be fine tuned. See, e.g., Buckley, supra, at 25, 30. The Government develops this rationale a step further here, arguing that a party's coordinated spending should be limited not only because it is like a party contribution, but because giving a party the right to make unlimited coordinated expenditures would induce those wishing to support a nominee to contribute to the party in order to finance coordinated spending for that candidate, thereby increasing circumvention and bypassing the limits Buckley upheld. Pp. 9-12.
(c) Although each of the competing positions is plausible at first blush, evaluation of the arguments prompts rejection of the Party's claim to suffer a burden unique in any way that should make a categorical difference under the First Amendment. And the Government's contentions are ultimately borne out by evidence, entitling it to prevail in its characterization of party coordinated spending as the functional equivalent of contributions. Pp. 12-25.
(1) The Party's argument that unrestricted coordinated spending is essential to a party's nature because of its unique relationship with candidates, has been rendered implausible by nearly 30 years' history under the Act. Since 1974, a party's coordinated spending in a given race has been limited by the provision challenged here (or its predecessor). It was not until the 1996 Colorado I decision that any spending was allowed above that amount, and since then only independent spending has been unlimited. Thus, the Party's claim that coordinated spending beyond the Act's limit is essential to its very function as a party amounts implicitly to saying that for almost three decades political parties have not been quite functional or have been functioning in systematic violation of the law. The Court cannot accept either implication. Pp. 13-15.
(2) There is a different weakness in the seemingly unexceptionable premise that parties are organized for the purpose of electing candidates, so that imposing on the way parties serve that function is uniquely burdensome. The fault here is a refusal to see how the power of money actually works in the political structure. Looking directly at a party's function in getting and spending money, it would ignore reality to think that the party role is adequately described by speaking generally of electing particular candidates. Parties are necessarily the instruments of some contributors, such as PACs, whose object is not to support the party's message or to elect party candidates, but rather to support a specific candidate for the sake of a position on one, narrow issue, or even to support any candidate who will be obliged to contributors. Parties thus perform functions more complex than simply electing their candidates: they act as agents for spending on behalf of those who seek to produce obligated officeholders. It is this party role, which functionally unites parties with other self-interested political actors, that the Party Expenditure Provision targets. Pp. 15-17.
(3) The Court agrees insofar as the Party suggests that its strong working relationship with candidates and its unique ability to speak in coordination with them should be taken into account in the First Amendment analysis. It is the accepted understanding that a party combines its members' power to speak by aggregating their contributions and broadcasting its messages more widely than its individual contributors generally could afford to do, and it marshals this power with greater sophistication than individuals generally could, using such mechanisms as speech coordinated with a candidate. Cf. Colorado I, supra, at 637. It does not, however, follow from a party's efficiency in getting large sums and spending intelligently that limits on a party's coordinated spending should be scrutinized under an unusually high standard. In fact, any argument from sophistication and power would cut both ways. On the one hand, one can seek the benefit of stricter scrutiny of a law capping party coordinated spending by emphasizing the heavy burden imposed by limiting the most effective mechanism of sophisticated spending. And yet it is exactly this efficiency culminating in coordinated spending that (on the Government's view) places a party in a position to be used to circumvent contribution limits that apply to individuals and PACs, and thereby to exacerbate the threat of corruption and apparent corruption that those contribution limits are aimed at reducing. Pp. 17-19.
(4) The preceding question assumes that parties enjoy a power and experience that sets them apart from other political spenders. But in fact the assumption is too crude. Like a party, rich individual donors, media executives, and PACs have the means to speak loudly and the capacity to work in tandem with a candidate. Yet all of them are subject to the coordinated spending limits upheld in Buckley, supra, at 46-47. A party is also like some of these political actors in its right under Colorado I to spend money in support of a candidate without legal limit so long as it spends independently. A party is not, therefore, in a unique position, but is in the same position as some individuals and PACs. Pp. 19-20.
(5) Because the Party's arguments do not pan out, the Court applies to a party's coordinated spending limitation the same scrutiny it has applied to the other political actors, that is, scrutiny appropriate for a contribution limit, enquiring whether the restriction is "closely drawn" to match the "sufficiently important" government interest in combating political corruption. E.g., Shrink Missouri, supra, at 387-388. Pp. 20-21.
(d) Under that standard, adequate evidentiary grounds exist to sustain the coordinated spending limit for parties. Substantial evidence demonstrates how candidates, donors, and parties test the current law's limits, and it shows beyond serious doubt how those contribution limits would be eroded if inducement to circumvent them were enhanced by declaring parties' coordinated spending wide open. Under the Act, a donor is limited to $2,000 in contributions to one candidate in a given election cycle. The same donor may give as much as another $20,000 each year to a national party committee supporting the candidate. The evidence shows that what a realist would expect to occur has occurred. Donors give to the party with the tacit understanding that the favored candidate will benefit. Testimony shows that, although the understanding between donor and party may involve no definite commitment and may be tacit on the donor's part, the frequency of the practice and the volume of money involved has required parties to adopt tallying procedures to connect donors to candidates. If suddenly every dollar of spending could be coordinated with the candidate, the inducement to circumvent would almost certainly intensify. Pp. 21-25.
(e) The Party's attempts to minimize the threat of corruption by circumvention are unavailing. Its claim that most contributions to parties are small, with negligible corrupting momentum to be carried through the party conduit, is unpersuasive given the evidence that, even under present law, substantial donations turn the parties into matchmakers whose special meetings and receptions give donors the chance to get their points across to the candidates. The fact that incumbent candidates give more excess campaign funds to parties than parties spend on coordinated expenditures does not defuse concern over circumvention; if party contributions were not used as a funnel from donors to candidates, there would be no reason for the tallying system described by the witnesses. Finally, the Court rejects the Party's claim that, even if there is a circumvention threat, the First Amendment demands a response better tailored to that threat than a limitation on coordinated spending. First, the Party's suggestion that better crafted safeguards are already in place in §441a(a)(8) which provides that contributions that are earmarked or otherwise directed through an intermediary to a candidate are treated as contributions to the candidate ignores the practical difficulty of identifying and directly combating circumvention when contributions go into a general party treasury and candidate-fundraisers are rewarded with something less obvious than dollar-for-dollar pass-throughs. Second, although the Party's call for replacing limits on parties' coordinated expenditures with limits on contributions to parties is based in part on reasoning in Buckley, supra, at 44, and Colorado I, supra, at 617, those cases ultimately turned on the understanding that the expenditures at issue were independent and therefore functionally true expenditures, whereas, here, just the opposite is true. Pp. 26-30.213 F.3d 1221, reversed.
* We first examined the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 in Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1 (1976) (per curiam), where we held that the Act's limitations on contributions to a candidate's election campaign were generally constitutional, but that limitations on election expenditures were not. Id., at 12-59. Later cases have respected this line between contributing and spending. See, e.g., Nixon v. Shrink Missouri Government PAC, 528 U.S. 377, 386-388 (2000); Colorado I, supra, at 610, 614-615; Federal Election Comm'n v. Massachusetts Citizens for Life, Inc., 479 U.S. 238, 259-260 (1986).
The simplicity of the distinction is qualified, however, by the Act's provision for a functional, not formal, definition of "contribution," which includes "expenditures made by any person in cooperation, consultation, or concert, with, or at the request or suggestion of, a candidate, his authorized political committees, or their agents," 2 U.S.C. § 441a(a)(7)(B)(i).1 Expenditures coordinated with a candidate, that is, are contributions under the Act.
The Federal Election Commission originally took the position that any expenditure by a political party in connection with a particular election for federal office was presumed to be coordinated with the party's candidate. See Federal Election Comm'n v. Democratic Senatorial Campaign Comm., 454 U.S. 27, 28-29, n. 1 (1981); Brief for Petitioner 6-7. The Commission thus operated on the assumption that all expenditure limits imposed on political parties were, in essence, contribution limits and therefore constitutional. Brief for Respondent in Colorado I, O.T. 1995, No. 95-489, pp. 28-30. Such limits include 2 U.S.C. § 441a(d)(3), which provides that in elections for the United States Senate, each national or state party committee2 is limited to spending the greater of $20,000 (adjusted for inflation, §441a(c)) or two cents multiplied by the voting age population of the State in which the election is held, §441a(d)(3)(A).3
Colorado I was an as-applied challenge to §441a(d)(3) (which we spoke of as the Party Expenditure Provision), occasioned by the Commission's enforcement action against the Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee (Party) for exceeding the campaign spending limit through its payments for radio advertisements attacking Democratic Congressman and senatorial candidate Timothy Wirth. Colorado I, supra, at 612-613. The Party defended in part with the claim that the party expenditure limitations violated the First Amendment, and the principal opinion in Colorado I agreed that the limitations were unconstitutional as applied to the advertising expenditures at issue. Unlike the Commission, the Members of the Court who joined the principal opinion thought the payments were "independent expenditures" as that term had been used in our prior cases, owing to the facts that the Party spent the money before selecting its own senatorial candidate and without any arrangement with potential nominees. Colorado I, 518 U.S., at 613-614 (opinion of Breyer, J.).
The Party's broader claim remained: that although prior decisions of this Court had upheld the constitutionality of limits on coordinated expenditures by political speakers other than parties, the congressional campaign expenditure limitations on parties themselves are facially unconstitutional, and so are incapable of reaching party spending even when coordinated with a candidate. Id., at 623-626.4 We remanded that facial challenge, which had not been fully briefed or considered below. Ibid. On remand the District Court held for the Party, 41 F. Supp. 2d 1197 (1999), and a divided panel of the Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit affirmed, 213 F.3d 1221 (2000).5 We granted certiorari to resolve the question left open by Colorado I, see 531 U.S. 923 (2000), and we now reverse.
Spending for political ends and contributing to political candidates both fall within the First Amendment's protection of speech and political association. Buckley, 424 U.S., at 14-23. But ever since we first reviewed the 1971 Act, we have understood that limits on political expenditures deserve closer scrutiny than restrictions on political contributions. Ibid; see also, e.g., Shrink Missouri, 528 U.S., at 386-388; Colorado I, supra, at 610, 614-615; Massachusetts Citizens for Life, 479 U.S., at 259-260. Restraints on expenditures generally curb more expressive and associational activity than limits on contributions do. Shrink Missouri, supra, at 386-388; Colorado I, supra, at 615; Buckley, 424 U.S., at 19-23. A further reason for the distinction is that limits on contributions are more clearly justified by a link to political corruption than limits on other kinds of unlimited political spending are (corruption being understood not only as quid pro quo agreements, but also as undue influence on an officerholder's judgment, and the appearance of such influence, Shrink Missouri, supra, at 388-389). At least this is so where the spending is not coordinated with a candidate or his campaign. Colorado I, supra, at 615; Buckley, 424 U.S., at 47. In Buckley we said that:
"[u]nlike contributions, independent expenditures may well provide little assistance to the candidate's campaign and indeed may prove counterproductive. The absence of prearrangement and coordination of an expenditure with the candidate or his agent not only undermines the value of the expenditure to the candidate, but also alleviates the danger that expenditures will be given as a quid pro quo for improper commitments from the candidate." Ibid.Given these differences, we have routinely struck down limitations on independent expenditures by candidates, other individuals, and groups, see Federal Election Comm'n v. National Conservative Political Action Comm., 470 U.S. 480, 490-501 (1985) (political action committees); Buckley, supra, at 39-58 (individuals, groups, candidates, and campaigns),6 while repeatedly upholding contribution limits, see Shrink Missouri, supra (contributions by political action committees); California Medical Assn. v. Federal Election Comm'n, 453 U.S. 182, 193-199 (1981) (contributions by individuals and associations); Buckley, supra, at 23-36 (contributions by individuals, groups, and political committees).7
The First Amendment line between spending and donating is easy to draw when it falls between independent expenditures by individuals or political action committees (PACs) without any candidate's approval (or wink or nod), and contributions in the form of cash gifts to candidates. See, e.g., Shrink Missouri, supra, at 386-388; Buckley, supra, at 19-23.8 But facts speak less clearly once the independence of the spending cannot be taken for granted, and money spent by an individual or PAC according to an arrangement with a candidate is therefore harder to classify. As already seen, Congress drew a functional, not a formal, line between contributions and expenditures when it provided that coordinated expenditures by individuals and nonparty groups are subject to the Act's contribution limits, 2 U.S.C. § 441a(a)(7)(B)(i); Colorado I, 518 U.S., at 611. In Buckley, the Court acknowledged Congress's functional classification, 424 U.S., at 46-47, and n. 53, and observed that treating coordinated expenditures as contributions "prevent[s] attempts to circumvent the Act through prearranged or coordinated expenditures amounting to disguised contributions," id., at 47. Buckley, in fact, enhanced the significance of this functional treatment by striking down independent expenditure limits on First Amendment grounds while upholding limitations on contributions (by individuals and nonparty groups), as defined to include coordinated expenditures, id., at 23-59.9
Colorado I addressed the FEC's effort to stretch the functional treatment of coordinated expenditures further than the plain application of the statutory definition. As we said, the FEC argued that parties and candidates are coupled so closely that all of a party's expenditures on an election campaign are coordinated with its candidate; because Buckley had treated some coordinated expenditures like contributions and upheld their limitation, the argument went, the Party Expenditure Provision should stand as applied to all party election spending. See Brief for Respondent in Colorado I, O.T. 1995, No. 95-489, pp. 28-30; see also Colorado I, supra, at 619-623. Colorado I held otherwise, however, the principal opinion's view being that some party expenditures could be seen as "independent" for constitutional purposes. 518 U.S., at 614. The principal opinion found no reason to see these expenditures as more likely to serve or be seen as instruments of corruption than independent expenditures by anyone else. So there was no justification for subjecting party election spending across the board to the kinds of limits previously invalidated when applied to individuals and nonparty groups. The principal opinion observed that "[t]he independent expression of a political party's views is 'core' First Amendment activity no less than is the independent expression of individuals, candidates, or other political committees." Id., at 616. Since the FEC did not advance any other convincing reason for refusing to draw the independent-coordinated line accepted since Buckley, see National Conservative Political Action Comm., 470 U.S., at 497-498; Buckley, supra, at 46-47, that was the end of the case so far as it concerned independent spending. Colorado I, supra, at 617-623.
The Party's argument that its coordinated spending, like its independent spending, should be left free from restriction under the Buckley line of cases boils down to this: because a party's most important speech is aimed at electing candidates and is itself expressed through those candidates, any limit on party support for a candidate imposes a unique First Amendment burden. See Brief for Respondent 26-31. The point of organizing a party, the argument goes, is to run a successful candidate who shares the party's policy goals. Id., at 26. Therefore, while a campaign contribution is only one of several ways that individuals and nonparty groups speak and associate politically, see Shrink Missouri, 528 U.S., at 386-387; Buckley, 424 U.S., at 20-22, financial support of candidates is essential to the nature of political parties as we know them. And coordination with a candidate is a party's natural way of operating, not merely an option that can easily be avoided. Brief for Respondent 26. Limitation of any party expenditure coordinated with a candidate, the Party contends, is therefore a serious, rather than incidental, imposition on the party's speech and associative purpose, and that justifies a stricter level of scrutiny than we have applied to analogous limits on individuals and nonparty groups. But whatever level of scrutiny is applied, the Party goes on to argue, the burden on a party reflects a fatal mismatch between the effects of limiting coordinated party expenditures and the prevention of corruption or the appearance of it. Brief for Respondent 20-22, 25-32; see also 213 F.3d, at 1227.
The Government's argument for treating coordinated spending like contributions goes back to Buckley. There, the rationale for endorsing Congress's equation of coordinated expenditures and contributions was that the equation "prevent[s] attempts to circumvent the Act through prearranged or coordinated expenditures amounting to disguised contributions." 424 U.S., at 47. The idea was that coordinated expenditures are as useful to the candidate as cash, and that such "disguised contributions" might be given "as a quid pro quo for improper commitments from the candidate" (in contrast to independent expenditures, which are poor sources of leverage for a spender because they might be duplicative or counterproductive from a candidate's point of view). Ibid. In effect, therefore, Buckley subjected limits on coordinated expenditures by individuals and nonparty groups to the same scrutiny it applied to limits on their cash contributions. The standard of scrutiny requires the limit to be " 'closely drawn' to match a 'sufficiently important interest,' though the dollar amount of the limit need not be 'fine tun[ed],' " Shrink Missouri, supra, at 387-388 (quoting Buckley, supra, at 25, 30).
Each of the competing positions is plausible at first blush. Our evaluation of the arguments, however, leads us to reject the Party's claim to suffer a burden unique in any way that should make a categorical difference under the First Amendment. On the other side, the Government's contentions are ultimately borne out by evidence, entitling it to prevail in its characterization of party coordinated spending as the functional equivalent ofcontributions.
* In assessing the Party's argument, we start with a word about what the Party is not saying. First, we do not understand the Party to be arguing that the line between independent and coordinated expenditures is conceptually unsound when applied to a political party instead of an individual or other association. See, e.g., Brief for Respondent 29 (describing "independent party speech"). Indeed, the good sense of recognizing the distinction between independence and coordination was implicit in the principal opinion in Colorado I, which did not accept the notion of a "metaphysical identity" between party and candidate, 518 U.S., at 622-623, but rather decided that some of a party's expenditures could be understood as being independent and therefore immune to limitation just as an ind