Opinion ID: 1741
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Buckley and Bellotti

Text: Against this extensive background of congressional regulation of corporate campaign spending, and our repeated affirmation of this regulation as constitutionally sound, the majority dismisses Austin as a significant departure from ancient First Amendment principles, ante, at 886 (internal quotation marks omitted). How does the majority attempt to justify this claim? Selected passages from two cases, Buckley, 424 U.S. 1, 96 S.Ct. 612, 46 L.Ed.2d 659, and Bellotti, 435 U.S. 765, 98 S.Ct. 1407, 55 L.Ed.2d 707, do all of the work. In the Court's view, Buckley and Bellotti decisively rejected the possibility of distinguishing corporations from natural persons in the 1970's; it just so happens that in every single case in which the Court has reviewed campaign finance legislation in the decades since, the majority failed to grasp this truth. The Federal Congress and dozens of state legislatures, we now know, have been similarly deluded. The majority emphasizes Buckley 's statement that `[t]he concept that government may restrict the speech of some elements of our society in order to enhance the relative voice of others is wholly foreign to the First Amendment.' Ante, at 904 (quoting 424 U.S., at 48-49, 96 S.Ct. 612); ante, at 921 (opinion of ROBERTS, C.J.). But this elegant phrase cannot bear the weight that our colleagues have placed on it. For one thing, the Constitution does, in fact, permit numerous restrictions on the speech of some in order to prevent a few from drowning out the many: for example, restrictions on ballot access and on legislators' floor time. Nixon v. Shrink Missouri Government PAC, 528 U.S. 377, 402, 120 S.Ct. 897, 145 L.Ed.2d 886 (2000) (BREYER, J., concurring). For another, the Buckley Court used this line in evaluating the ancillary governmental interest in equalizing the relative ability of individuals and groups to influence the outcome of elections. 424 U.S., at 48, 96 S.Ct. 612. It is not apparent why this is relevant to the case before us. The majority suggests that Austin rests on the foreign concept of speech equalization, ante, at 904-905; ante, at 921-922 (opinion of ROBERTS, C.J.), but we made it clear in Austin (as in several cases before and since) that a restriction on the way corporations spend their money is no mere exercise in disfavoring the voice of some elements of our society in preference to others. Indeed, we expressly ruled that the compelling interest supporting Michigan's statute was not one of `equaliz[ing] the relative influence of speakers on elections,' Austin, 494 U.S., at 660, 110 S.Ct. 1391 (quoting id., at 705, 110 S.Ct. 1391 (KENNEDY, J., dissenting)), but rather the need to confront the distinctive corrupting potential of corporate electoral advocacy financed by general treasury dollars, id., at 659-660, 110 S.Ct. 1391. For that matter, it should go without saying that when we made this statement in Buckley, we could not have been casting doubt on the restriction on corporate expenditures in candidate elections, which had not been challenged as foreign to the First Amendment, ante, at 904 (quoting Buckley, 424 U.S., at 49, 96 S.Ct. 612), or for any other reason. Buckley 's independent expenditure analysis was focused on a very different statutory provision, 18 U.S.C. § 608(e)(1) (1970 ed., Supp. V). It is implausible to think, as the majority suggests, ante, at 901-902, that Buckley covertly invalidated FECA's separate corporate and union campaign expenditure restriction, § 610 (now codified at 2 U.S.C. § 441b), even though that restriction had been on the books for decades before Buckley and would remain on the books, undisturbed, for decades after. The case on which the majority places even greater weight than Buckley, however, is Bellotti, 435 U.S. 765, 98 S.Ct. 1407, 55 L.Ed.2d 707, claiming it could not have been clearer that Bellotti 's holding forbade distinctions between corporate and individual expenditures like the one at issue here, ante, at 902. The Court's reliance is odd. The only thing about Bellotti that could not be clearer is that it declined to adopt the majority's position. Bellotti ruled, in an explicit limitation on the scope of its holding, that our consideration of a corporation's right to speak on issues of general public interest implies no comparable right in the quite different context of participation in a political campaign for election to public office. 435 U.S., at 788, n. 26, 98 S.Ct. 1407; see also id., at 787-788, 98 S.Ct. 1407 (acknowledging that the interests in preserving public confidence in Government and protecting dissenting shareholders may be weighty . . . in the context of partisan candidate elections). Bellotti, in other words, did not touch the question presented in Austin and McConnell, and the opinion squarely disavowed the proposition for which the majority cites it. The majority attempts to explain away the distinction Bellotti drewbetween general corporate speech and campaign speech intended to promote or prevent the election of specific candidates for office as inconsistent with the rest of the opinion and with Buckley. Ante, at 903, 909-910. Yet the basis for this distinction is perfectly coherent: The anticorruption interests that animate regulations of corporate participation in candidate elections, the importance of which has never been doubted, 435 U.S., at 788, n. 26, 98 S.Ct. 1407, do not apply equally to regulations of corporate participation in referenda. A referendum cannot owe a political debt to a corporation, seek to curry favor with a corporation, or fear the corporation's retaliation. Cf. Austin, 494 U.S., at 678, 110 S.Ct. 1391 (STEVENS, J., concurring); Citizens Against Rent Control/Coalition for Fair Housing v. Berkeley, 454 U.S. 290, 299, 102 S.Ct. 434, 70 L.Ed.2d 492 (1981). The majority likewise overlooks the fact that, over the past 30 years, our cases have repeatedly recognized the candidate/issue distinction. See, e.g., Austin, 494 U.S., at 659, 110 S.Ct. 1391; NCPAC, 470 U.S., at 495-496, 105 S.Ct. 1459; FCC v. League of Women Voters of Cal., 468 U.S. 364, 371, n. 9, 104 S.Ct. 3106, 82 L.Ed.2d 278 (1984); NRWC, 459 U.S., at 210, n. 7, 103 S.Ct. 552. The Court's critique of Bellotti 's footnote 26 puts it in the strange position of trying to elevate Bellotti to canonical status, while simultaneously disparaging a critical piece of its analysis as unsupported and irreconcilable with Buckley. Bellotti, apparently, is both the font of all wisdom and internally incoherent. The Bellotti Court confronted a dramatically different factual situation from the one that confronts us in this case: a state statute that barred business corporations' expenditures on some referenda but not others. Specifically, the statute barred a business corporation from making contributions or expenditures `for the purpose of. . . influencing or affecting the vote on any question submitted to the voters, other than one materially affecting any of the property, business or assets of the corporation,' 435 U.S., at 768, 98 S.Ct. 1407 (quoting Mass. Gen. Laws Ann., ch. 55, § 8 (West Supp.1977); alteration in original), and it went so far as to provide that referenda related to income taxation would not `be deemed materially to affect the property, business or assets of the corporation,' 435 U.S., at 768, 98 S.Ct. 1407. As might be guessed, the legislature had enacted this statute in order to limit corporate speech on a proposed state constitutional amendment to authorize a graduated income tax. The statute was a transparent attempt to prevent corporations from spending money to defeat this amendment, which was favored by a majority of legislators but had been repeatedly rejected by the voters. See id., at 769-770, and n. 3, 98 S.Ct. 1407. We said that where, as here, the legislature's suppression of speech suggests an attempt to give one side of a debatable public question an advantage in expressing its views to the people, the First Amendment is plainly offended. Id., at 785-786, 98 S.Ct. 1407 (footnote omitted). Bellotti thus involved a viewpoint-discriminatory statute, created to effect a particular policy outcome. Even Justice Rehnquist, in dissent, had to acknowledge that a very persuasive argument could be made that the [Massachusetts Legislature], desiring to impose a personal income tax but more than once defeated in that desire by the combination of the Commonwealth's referendum provision and corporate expenditures in opposition to such a tax, simply decided to muzzle corporations on this sort of issue so that it could succeed in its desire. Id., at 827, n. 6, 98 S.Ct. 1407. To make matters worse, the law at issue did not make any allowance for corporations to spend money through PACs. Id., at 768, n. 2, 98 S.Ct. 1407 (opinion of the Court). This really was a complete ban on a specific, preidentified subject. See MCFL, 479 U.S., at 259, n. 12, 107 S.Ct. 616 (stating that 2 U.S.C. § 441b's expenditure restriction is of course distinguishable from the complete foreclosure of any opportunity for political speech that we invalidated in the state referendum context in . . . Bellotti  (emphasis added)). The majority grasps a quotational straw from Bellotti, that speech does not fall entirely outside the protection of the First Amendment merely because it comes from a corporation. Ante, at 902-903. Of course not, but no one suggests the contrary and neither Austin nor McConnell held otherwise. They held that even though the expenditures at issue were subject to First Amendment scrutiny, the restrictions on those expenditures were justified by a compelling state interest. See McConnell, 540 U.S., at 205, 124 S.Ct. 619; Austin, 494 U.S., at 658, 660, 110 S.Ct. 1391. We acknowledged in Bellotti that numerous interests of the highest importance can justify campaign finance regulation. 435 U.S., at 788-789, 98 S.Ct. 1407. But we found no evidence that these interests were served by the Massachusetts law. Id., at 789, 98 S.Ct. 1407. We left open the possibility that our decision might have been different if there had been record or legislative findings that corporate advocacy threatened imminently to undermine democratic processes, thereby denigrating rather than serving First Amendment interests. Ibid. Austin and McConnell, then, sit perfectly well with Bellotti. Indeed, all six Members of the Austin majority had been on the Court at the time of Bellotti, and none so much as hinted in Austin that they saw any tension between the decisions. The difference between the cases is not that Austin and McConnell rejected First Amendment protection for corporations whereas Bellotti accepted it. The difference is that the statute at issue in Bellotti smacked of viewpoint discrimination, targeted one class of corporations, and provided no PAC option; and the State has a greater interest in regulating independent corporate expenditures on candidate elections than on referenda, because in a functioning democracy the public must have faith that its representatives owe their positions to the people, not to the corporations with the deepest pockets.