Amicus Brief: National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Commission

On the Supreme Court’s docket this fall case is a challenge to the Federal Election Campaign Act’s restriction on coordinated spending between political parties and their candidates. The Court upheld these limits in Colorado II (2001), rejecting a First Amendment challenge by a 5–4 vote. Last December, after losing in the lower courts—understandable given that precedent—the National Republican Senatorial Committee petitioned the Court to reconsider its jurisprudence in this area. The federal government responded but declined to defend the law, stating the limits violate the First Amendment. The Supreme Court granted took the case and appointed an amicus to argue in favor of the ruling below. The Manhattan Institute has now filed an amicus brief, alongside the Institute for Free Speech (let by former FEC chairman Brad Smith), arguing: (1) Colorado II’s conjecture about the need to police coordination to limit money in campaigns is wrong, (2) the original sin here, as always, is Buckley v. Valeo (1976) and its evidence-free review of campaign-finance regs, and (3) Buckley’s deference to Congress is made worse by the fact that Congress lacks any authority to regulate political speech in the first place.

Ilya Shapiro is a senior fellow and director of Constitutional Studies at the Manhattan Institute. Follow him on Twitter here.

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