Opinion ID: 1741
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Legislative and Judicial Interpretation

Text: A century of more recent history puts to rest any notion that today's ruling is faithful to our First Amendment tradition. At the federal level, the express distinction between corporate and individual political spending on elections stretches back to 1907, when Congress passed the Tillman Act, ch. 420, 34 Stat. 864, banning all corporate contributions to candidates. The Senate Report on the legislation observed that [t]he evils of the use of [corporate] money in connection with political elections are so generally recognized that the committee deems it unnecessary to make any argument in favor of the general purpose of this measure. It is in the interest of good government and calculated to promote purity in the selection of public officials. S.Rep. No. 3056, 59th Cong., 1st Sess., 2 (1906). President Roosevelt, in his 1905 annual message to Congress, declared: `All contributions by corporations to any political committee or for any political purpose should be forbidden by law; directors should not be permitted to use stockholders' money for such purposes; and, moreover, a prohibition of this kind would be, as far as it went, an effective method of stopping the evils aimed at in corrupt practices acts.' United States v. Automobile Workers, 352 U.S. 567, 572, 77 S.Ct. 529, 1 L.Ed.2d 563 (1957) (quoting 40 Cong. Rec. 96). The Court has surveyed the history leading up to the Tillman Act several times, see WRTL, 551 U.S., at 508-510, 127 S.Ct. 2652 (Souter, J., dissenting); McConnell, 540 U.S., at 115, 124 S.Ct. 619; Automobile Workers, 352 U.S., at 570-575, 77 S.Ct. 529, and I will refrain from doing so again. It is enough to say that the Act was primarily driven by two pressing concerns: first, the enormous power corporations had come to wield in federal elections, with the accompanying threat of both actual corruption and a public perception of corruption; and second, a respect for the interest of shareholders and members in preventing the use of their money to support candidates they opposed. See ibid.; United States v. CIO, 335 U.S. 106, 113, 68 S.Ct. 1349, 92 L.Ed. 1849 (1948); Winkler, Other People's Money: Corporations, Agency Costs, and Campaign Finance Law, 92 Geo. L.J. 871 (2004). Over the years, the limitations on corporate political spending have been modified in a number of ways, as Congress responded to changes in the American economy and political practices that threatened to displace the commonweal. Justice Souter recently traced these developments at length. [59] WRTL, 551 U.S., at 507-519, 127 S.Ct. 2652 (dissenting opinion); see also McConnell, 540 U.S., at 115-133, 124 S.Ct. 619; McConnell, 251 F.Supp.2d, at 188-205. The Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 is of special significance for this case. In that Act passed more than 60 years ago, Congress extended the prohibition on corporate support of candidates to cover not only direct contributions, but independent expenditures as well. Labor Management Relations Act, 1947, § 304, 61 Stat. 159. The bar on contributions was being so narrowly construed that corporations were easily able to defeat the purposes of the Act by supporting candidates through other means. WRTL, 551 U.S., at 511, 127 S.Ct. 2652 (Souter, J., dissenting) (citing S.Rep. No. 1, 80th Cong., 1st Sess., 38-39 (1947)). Our colleagues emphasize that in two cases from the middle of the 20th century, several Justices wrote separately to criticize the expenditure restriction as applied to unions, even though the Court declined to pass on its constitutionality. Ante, at 900-901. Two features of these cases are of far greater relevance. First, those Justices were writing separately; which is to say, their position failed to command a majority. Prior to today, this was a fact we found significant in evaluating precedents. Second, each case in this line expressed support for the principle that corporate and union political speech financed with PAC funds, collected voluntarily from the organization's stockholders or members, receives greater protection than speech financed with general treasury funds. [60] This principle was carried forward when Congress enacted comprehensive campaign finance reform in the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 (FECA), 86 Stat. 3, which retained the restriction on using general treasury funds for contributions and expenditures, 2 U.S.C. § 441b(a). FECA codified the option for corporations and unions to create PACs to finance contributions and expenditures forbidden to the corporation or union itself. § 441b(b). By the time Congress passed FECA in 1971, the bar on corporate contributions and expenditures had become such an accepted part of federal campaign finance regulation that when a large number of plaintiffs, including several nonprofit corporations, challenged virtually every aspect of the Act in Buckley, 424 U.S. 1, 96 S.Ct. 612, 46 L.Ed.2d 659, no one even bothered to argue that the bar as such was unconstitutional. Buckley famously (or infamously) distinguished direct contributions from independent expenditures, id., at 58-59, 96 S.Ct. 612, but its silence on corporations only reinforced the understanding that corporate expenditures could be treated differently from individual expenditures. Since our decision in Buckley, Congress' power to prohibit corporations and unions from using funds in their treasuries to finance advertisements expressly advocating the election or defeat of candidates in federal elections has been firmly embedded in our law. McConnell, 540 U.S., at 203, 124 S.Ct. 619. Thus, it was unremarkable, in a 1982 case holding that Congress could bar nonprofit corporations from soliciting nonmembers for PAC funds, that then-Justice Rehnquist wrote for a unanimous Court that Congress' careful legislative adjustment of the federal electoral laws, in a cautious advance, step by step, to account for the particular legal and economic attributes of corporations . . . warrants considerable deference, and reflects a permissible assessment of the dangers posed by those entities to the electoral process. NRWC, 459 U.S., at 209, 103 S.Ct. 552 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). The governmental interest in preventing both actual corruption and the appearance of corruption of elected representatives has long been recognized, the unanimous Court observed, and there is no reason why it may not . . . be accomplished by treating . . . corporations . . . differently from individuals. Id., at 210-211, 103 S.Ct. 552. The corporate/individual distinction was not questioned by the Court's disposition, in 1986, of a challenge to the expenditure restriction as applied to a distinctive type of nonprofit corporation. In MCFL, 479 U.S. 238, 107 S.Ct. 616, 93 L.Ed.2d 539, we stated again that `the special characteristics of the corporate structure require particularly careful regulation,' id., at 256, 107 S.Ct. 616 (quoting NRWC, 459 U.S., at 209-210, 103 S.Ct. 552), and again we acknowledged that the Government has a legitimate interest in regulat[ing] the substantial aggregations of wealth amassed by the special advantages which go with the corporate form, 479 U.S., at 257, 107 S.Ct. 616 (internal quotation marks omitted). Those aggregations can distort the free trade in ideas crucial to candidate elections, ibid., at the expense of members or shareholders who may disagree with the object of the expenditures, id., at 260, 107 S.Ct. 616 (internal quotation marks omitted). What the Court held by a 5-to-4 vote was that a limited class of corporations must be allowed to use their general treasury funds for independent expenditures, because Congress' interests in protecting shareholders and restrict[ing] `the influence of political war chests funneled through the corporate form,' id., at 257, 107 S.Ct. 616 (quoting FEC v. National Conservative Political Action Comm., 470 U.S. 480, 501, 105 S.Ct. 1459, 84 L.Ed.2d 455 (1985) (NCPAC) ), did not apply to corporations that were structurally insulated from those concerns. [61] It is worth remembering for present purposes that the four MCFL dissenters, led by Chief Justice Rehnquist, thought the Court was carrying the First Amendment too far. They would have recognized congressional authority to bar general treasury electioneering expenditures even by this class of nonprofits; they acknowledged that the threat from corporate political activity will vary depending on the particular characteristics of a given corporation, but believed these distinctions among corporations were distinctions in degree, not in kind, and thus more properly drawn by the Legislature than by the Judiciary. 479 U.S., at 268, 107 S.Ct. 616 (opinion of Rehnquist, C.J.) (internal quotation marks omitted). Not a single Justice suggested that regulation of corporate political speech could be no more stringent than of speech by an individual. Four years later, in Austin, 494 U.S. 652, 110 S.Ct. 1391, 108 L.Ed.2d 652, we considered whether corporations falling outside the MCFL exception could be barred from using general treasury funds to make independent expenditures in support of, or in opposition to, candidates. We held they could be. Once again recognizing the importance of the integrity of the marketplace of political ideas in candidate elections, MCFL, 479 U.S., at 257, 107 S.Ct. 616, we noted that corporations have special advantagessuch as limited liability, perpetual life, and favorable treatment of the accumulation and distribution of assets, 494 U.S., at 658-659, 110 S.Ct. 1391that allow them to spend prodigious general treasury sums on campaign messages that have little or no correlation with the beliefs held by actual persons, id., at 660, 110 S.Ct. 1391. In light of the corrupting effects such spending might have on the political process, ibid., we permitted the State of Michigan to limit corporate expenditures on candidate elections to corporations' PACs, which rely on voluntary contributions and thus reflect actual public support for the political ideals espoused by corporations, ibid. Notwithstanding our colleagues' insinuations that Austin deprived the public of general ideas, facts, and knowledge, ante, at 906-907, the decision addressed only candidate-focused expenditures and gave the State no license to regulate corporate spending on other matters. In the 20 years since Austin, we have reaffirmed its holding and rationale a number of times, see, e.g., Beaumont, 539 U.S., at 153-156, 123 S.Ct. 2200, most importantly in McConnell, 540 U.S. 93, 124 S.Ct. 619, 157 L.Ed.2d 491, where we upheld the provision challenged here, § 203 of BCRA. [62] Congress crafted § 203 in response to a problem created by Buckley. The Buckley Court had construed FECA's definition of prohibited expenditures narrowly to avoid any problems of constitutional vagueness, holding it applicable only to communications that expressly advocate the election or defeat of a clearly identified candidate, 424 U.S., at 80, 96 S.Ct. 612, i.e., statements containing so-called magic words like `vote for,' `elect,' `support,' `cast your ballot for,' `Smith for Congress,' `vote against,' `defeat,' [or] `reject,' id., at 43-44, and n. 52, 96 S.Ct. 612. After Buckley, corporations and unions figured out how to circumvent the limits on express advocacy by using sham issue ads that eschewed the use of magic words but nonetheless advocate[d] the election or defeat of clearly identified federal candidates. McConnell, 540 U.S., at 126, 124 S.Ct. 619. Corporations and unions spent hundreds of millions of dollars of their general funds to pay for these ads. Id., at 127, 124 S.Ct. 619. Congress passed § 203 to address this circumvention, prohibiting corporations and unions from using general treasury funds for electioneering communications that refe[r] to a clearly identified candidate, whether or not those communications use the magic words. 2 U.S.C. § 434(f)(3)(A)(i)(I). When we asked in McConnell whether a compelling governmental interest justifie[d] § 203, we found the question easily answered: We have repeatedly sustained legislation aimed at `the corrosive and distorting effects of immense aggregations of wealth that are accumulated with the help of the corporate form and that have little or no correlation to the public's support for the corporation's political ideas.' 540 U.S., at 205, 124 S.Ct. 619 (quoting Austin, 494 U.S., at 660, 110 S.Ct. 1391). These precedents represent respect for the legislative judgment that the special characteristics of the corporate structure require particularly careful regulation. 540 U.S., at 205, 124 S.Ct. 619 (internal quotation marks omitted). Moreover, recent cases have recognized that certain restrictions on corporate electoral involvement permissibly hedge against `circumvention of [valid] contribution limits.' Ibid. (quoting Beaumont, 539 U.S., at 155, 123 S.Ct. 2200, in turn quoting FEC v. Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Comm., 533 U.S. 431, 456, and n. 18, 121 S.Ct. 2351, 150 L.Ed.2d 461 (2001) (Colorado II); alteration in original). BCRA, we found, is faithful to the compelling governmental interests in `preserving the integrity of the electoral process, preventing corruption, . . . sustaining the active, alert responsibility of the individual citizen in a democracy for the wise conduct of the government,' and maintaining `the individual citizen's confidence in government.' 540 U.S., at 206-207, n. 88, 124 S.Ct. 619 (quoting Bellotti, 435 U.S., at 788-789, 98 S.Ct. 1407; some internal quotation marks and brackets omitted). What made the answer even easier than it might have been otherwise was the option to form PACs, which give corporations, at the least, a constitutionally sufficient opportunity to engage in independent expenditures. 540 U.S., at 203, 124 S.Ct. 619.