TIM SLOAN/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
The Supreme Court handed campaign finance advocates a victory today but they're worried about what Chief Justice John G. Roberts' court might do in the future.
Monday, March 21, 2011 | 1:55 p.m.
The Supreme Court handed a victory to campaign finance watchdogs on Monday, refusing to hear a Republican National Committee challenge to federal campaign spending restrictions.
In the case, Cao v. FEC, lawyers for former Rep. Anh (Joseph) Cao, R-La., and the Republican National Committee sought to overturn legal limits on how much parties are allowed to spend for their candidates. The Supreme Court's decision not to take the case lets stand a lower court ruling that upheld the constitutionality of the limits.
James Bopp, Jr., who represented the RNC in the case, said he was "surprised and disappointed" that the justices decided not to hear his appeal.
Current law limits how much money political parties can spend on behalf of their candidates. In the 2010 elections, they were allowed to spend $43,500 on House races and between $87,000 and $2.4 million on Senate candidates depending on the size of a state's population.
Defenders of campaign finance restrictions were heartened by Monday's ruling: Tara Malloy, a lawyer at the Campaign Legal Center, which filed a brief defending the existing law, called it "good news."
Allowing parties to spend unlimited amounts in support of individual candidates would essentially obliterate limits on contributions to candidates, Malloy said, because the law allows individuals to donate more to parties.
The lawsuit was part of an ongoing attack on campaign finance restrictions by conservatives. The Supreme Court ruled last year in Citizens United v. FEC that corporations and unions can spend unlimited amounts of money on political advertising, opening the gates for a flood of outside money in last year's election.
One complaint lawyers from both political parties have had since Citizens United is that outside groups can spend as much as they want, while political parties must abide by federal limits. Malloy admitted that "the system is becoming somewhat unbalanced" toward outside groups, but said that political parties have always raised unique corruption concerns because of how close they are to candidates. She said this was part of the concern groups like hers had with the Citizens Uniteddecision: That, in the words of Justice Stephen Breyer, the decision would make "a hash" out of campaign finance regulation law.
"I can understand the worries of those allied with the political parties that their powers are going to be diminished compared to corporations," said Malloy.
Bopp said that it's unlikely another challenge will be mounted against this portion of campaign finance law, since only the two parties could challenge it and the RNC, "the one most likely to," already tried and failed.
But Malloy warned that challenges to other aspects of the campaign finance law are working their way through the courts, and acknowledged that supporters of campaign spending limits are worried about how the Supreme Court will rule. "The Roberts court hasn't been shy in intervening in campaign finance cases," she said, referring to Chief Justice John Roberts.
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