CENTER
FOR COMPETITIVE POLITICS
PRESS RELEASE: June 26, 2006
Media Contact: Professor
Lillian R. BeVier: (434) 924-3132
Erik S. Jaffe (202) 237-8165
Professor Bradley A. Smith (614) 236-6317
FOR
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
High Court Declines to Find a Compelling
Interest in Limiting Candidate Expenditures and Rules Vermont’s
Contribution Limits Unconstitutionally Low
Arlington, Va. – In an effort to affirm prior precedent,
the Supreme Court today invalidated Vermont’s limits on candidate
expenditures, and invalidated as well the State’s unduly low limits on
contributions made to candidates by party committees and individuals. “The most significant part of the opinion is the
rejection of the spending limits; specifically, the Court’s decision
not to find a compelling interest in limiting candidate expenditures,
and not to remand that question to a lower court for narrow tailoring. This means that the Court has reinvigorated the
relatively strict review of campaign finance regulations that it
endorsed in its seminal 1976 Buckley opinion,” said
Lillian R. BeVier, Professor of Law at the University of Virginia
School of Law and Academic Advisor to the Center for Competitive
Politics (“CCP”), a non-profit organization that filed an amicus
curiae brief in today’s case, Randall v. Sorrell,
No. 04-1528.
The Court also invalidated
contribution limits of $200, $300, and $400 dollars as an unnecessary
burden on challengers. “By applying five factors, the Court found that
Vermont’s restrictions on a candidate’s ability to raise funds
negatively impact electoral competition and citizen participation,”
said former Federal Election Commissioner Bradley A. Smith, Professor
of Law at Capital University Law School. “Today’s
opinion sets some quantifiable boundary on the ‘complaisant review’ the
Court afforded legislative attempts to set contribution limits regimes
only several years ago in its Shrink Missouri
opinion,” Smith said.
“Another interesting dynamic in the
case is the collection of jurists signing onto each of the six separate
opinions,” said Erik S. Jaffe, noted First Amendment expert, former
Supreme Court clerk and counsel to the amici in the case. “Justice Breyer, siding with the Chief Justice and
Justice Alito rather than with his more speech-restrictive colleagues,
showed there is a point past which even he will not go in extending
restrictions seemingly permitted by some of the Court's
recent decisions. While Justice Thomas's concurring opinion noted
correctly the continuing incoherence of the Court's reasoning in
campaign finance and a need for further protection of political speech,
today's decision at least suggests that the pendulum is swinging back
in favor of the First Amendment, even if it does not solve the larger,
structural illogic of campaign finance cases,” Jaffe said.
Joining CCP in the brief were the Cato
Institute, the Institute for Justice, the Reason Foundation, and the
Goldwater Institute.
The
Center for Competitive Politics is a non-profit organization founded in
August 2005 by former Federal Election Commissioner Bradley A. Smith
and Stephen M. Hoersting, a
campaign finance attorney and former General Counsel to the National
Republican Senatorial Committee. CCP’s mission,
through legal briefs, studies, historical and constitutional analyses,
and media communication, is to educate the public on the actual effects
of money in politics, and the results of a more free and competitive
electoral process.
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