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Citizens United vs. FEC
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Citizens United vs. FEC
Arcelia Castro & Francisco Rios
BCRA
BCRA
In 2002, Congress passed the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA), widely known as the McCain-Feingold Act, after its original sponsors, Senators John McCain of Arizona and Russ Feingold of Wisconsin.
Key Provision
Key Provision
BCRA's key provision, Section 203: the BCRA prevented corporations or labor unions from using their general treasuries to fund “electioneering communications,” or radio, TV or satellite broadcasts that refer to a candidate for federal office within 60 days before a general election and within 30 days of a primary election.
ABOUT
HILLARY: THE MOVIE
In 2008, the conservative nonprofit organization Citizens United sought an injunction against the Federal Election Commission (FEC) in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., in order to prevent the application of the BCRA to its documentary Hillary: The Movie.
FIRST AMENDMENT
FIRST AMENDMENT
According to Citizens United, Section 203 of the BCRA violated the First Amendment right to free speech both on its face and as it applied to Hillary: The Movie, and other BCRA provisions regarding disclosures of funding and clear identification of sponsors were also unconstitutional.
TRAILER
PROGRAMS
The U.S. District Court ruled against Citizens United on all counts, citing the decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in McConnell vs. FEC (2003), an earlier challenge to campaign finance regulation brought by Republican Senator Mitch McConnell. That ruling upheld the constitutionality of the BCRA’s Section 203.
MCCONNLL VS. FEC
FEC vs. WISCONIN
The U.S. District Court also held that Hillary: The Movie amounted to “express advocacy or its functional equivalent,” as required by another Supreme Court decision, in Federal Election Commission vs. Wisconsin Right to Life, Inc. (2003), because it attempted to inform voters that Clinton was unfit for office. Because of this, the court ruled, Section 203 was not unconstitutionally applied.
Citizens United vs. FEC
The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review the lower court’s decision, and heard the first oral arguments in Citizens United vs. FEC in March 2009. While initially the Court expected to rule on narrower grounds related to the film itself, it soon asked the parties to file additional briefs addressing whether it should reconsider all or part of two previous verdicts, McConnell vs. FEC and Austin vs. Michigan Chamber of Commerce (1990).
Citizens United vs. FEC
CITIZENS UNITED DECISION
After the case was reargued in a special session, the Supreme Court handed down a 5-4 verdict on January 21, 2010, that overruled its earlier verdict in McConnell regarding the constitutionality of the BCRA’s Section 203.
CITIZENS UNITED DECISION
OPINION
Continued
The majority opinion, written by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, held that the First Amendment protects the right to free speech, even if the speaker is a corporation, and effectively removed limitations on corporate funding of independent political broadcasts.
Continued
Citizens United
Freedom of political speech is vital to our democracy, and spending money on political advertisements is one way of spreading speech.
The First Amendment applies equally to speech by individuals and speech by groups. Companies, unions, and other organizations should not face stricter rules about their speech than individuals do.
Newspapers are corporations. Through editorials, news organizations and media companies try to influence elections. If Congress is allowed to ban corporations from placing political ads, what prevents them from regulating the media as well?
Though some people or organizations have more money and can therefore speak more, the First Amendment does not allow for making some forms of speech illegal in order to make things “fair.”
ARGUMENTS
Federal Election Commission
FEC
Corruption is not limited to bribes and direct transactions. By being allowed to spend unlimited sums of money in support of a candidate, corporations and unions will have a certain amount of access to, if not power over, that candidate.
Even if no corruption takes place, the public may view the vast sums spent by corporations and unions for specific candidates and see the appearance of corruption. That could cause people to lose faith in the electoral system.
The First Amendment does not apply to corporations because the Constitution was established for “We the People” and was set up to protect individual, rather than corporate, liberties.
ARE CORPORATIONS PEOPLE?
ARE CORPORATIONS PEOPLE?
A Washington Post-ABC News poll taken at the time showed that a majority of Americans, both Republicans and Democrats, opposed the Supreme Court’s decision in the Citizens United case, and some 72 percent polled thought Congress should take action to restore some limits to political spending.
DISCLOSURE
In its decision in Citizens United vs. FEC, the Supreme Court did endorse the idea that spending in a political campaign should be disclosed to the public in order to prevent corruption.
CITIZENS UNITED IMPACT
INTERNET AGE
INTERNET
In the Internet age, the Court reasoned, the public should easily be able to inform itself about corporate-funded political advertising, and identify “whether elected officials are ‘in the pocket’ of so-called moneyed interests.”
IN PRACTICE
IN PRACTICE
In practice, however, it didn’t work that way, as some of the nonprofit organizations now able to spend unlimited amounts on political campaigns claimed tax-exempt status as “social welfare” organizations, which did not have to disclose their donors’ identities.
SpeechNow.org vs. FEC
In a related 2010 case, SpeechNow.org vs. FEC, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit cited the Citizens United decision when it struck down limits on the amount of money that individuals could give to organizations that expressly supported political candidates.
RISE OF THE SUPER PACS
Citizens United vs. FEC
PACS
Contributions to political action committees (PACs) had previously been limited to $5,000 per person per year, but now that spending was essentially unlimited, so-called “super PACs” emerged that would exert a growing influence on local, state and federal political elections.
Citizens United vs. FEC
Citizens United vs. FEC
In the years since the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Citizens United vs. FEC, hundreds of millions of dollars have been poured into these super PACs, allowing a relatively small group of wealthy individuals and corporations to exert an outsize influence on local, state and federal elections.