Citizens United v FEC
"Citizens United v. FEC" was a landmark 2010 Supreme Court case that ruled in favor of unlimited corporate and union spending on political campaigns. The decision held that political spending is a form of protected speech under the First Amendment, leading to the rise of super PACs and increased influence of money in politics. This decision has had a significant impact on campaign finance laws and political advertising.
7 Key excerpts on "Citizens United v FEC"
eBook - ePub- William Bennett Turner(Author)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- William Bennett Turner(Publisher)
...1 CITIZENS UNITED Corporate Money Talks Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission 1 is the Roberts Court’s most important First Amendment decision. It is also the most misunderstood (partly because the opinions in the case run to 176 pages, and few people have read them). It freed corporations to spend without limit to support or oppose candidates for political office. The Citizens United decision is in many ways the best example of what the Roberts Court has been doing with the First Amendment: • It was a 5–4 decision, with the justices divided along familiar conservative-liberal lines according to the party of the president who appointed them. • The majority opinion was written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, the court’s most enthusiastic First Amendment supporter and the author of several of its most important free speech decisions. • The result strongly advanced corporate and conservative political interests. • Abandoning any commitment to judicial restraint, the court converted a narrow dispute into a major change in American law, overruled a long-standing precedent to arrive at the desired result, and delivered the broadest ruling imaginable. • The court aggressively employed merciless, unforgiving scrutiny to the justifications offered by the government for restricting corporate spending. • The decision had significant real-world consequences, greatly increasing the amount of money spent on political campaigns and creating new sources for campaign funding. Its reasoning led almost immediately to the creation of super PACs (political action committees). Although the court did not actually say, “money is speech,” it held that “independent expenditures”—spending on elections not coordinated with a candidate—are incapable of causing corruption, are treated as “speech,” and are therefore protected by the First Amendment...
eBook - ePubSilencing the Opposition
How the U.S. Government Suppressed Freedom of Expression During Major Crises, Second Edition
- Craig R. Smith, Craig R. Smith(Authors)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- SUNY Press(Publisher)
...The number of concurring comments took the ruling to 275 pages wherein the past arguments regarding Buckley again surfaced. 38 In the end, the Court upheld Congress' right to regulate federal elections; the dissenters argued that the First Amendment had been violated and the two parties entrenched. Justice Antonin Scalia pointed out that the same court that afforded protection under the First Amendment to virtual pornography, tobacco advertising, and sexually explicit cable broadcasting had decided to restrict political speech, arguably the most valuable to a fully functioning democratic republic. And hence, in the case of Hillary: The Movie, (i.e., Citizens United v. FEC) decided on January 21, 2010, Justice Scalia joined the majority and upheld the right of groups to fund speech aimed at federal candidates. Specifically, the 1907 prohibition of corporations spending funds in federal political campaigns was overturned as was the 1947 law barring corporations and unions from spending money independently to elect or defeat federal candidates. The Supreme Court also eliminated the McCain-Feingold restrictions on how much corporations and unions can advertise in federal election campaigns. Thus, coroporations and unions are now freer to make contributions and to campaign for candidates than are individual citizens. Conclusion One of the most interesting aspects of these court rulings is that the imputation of guilt is used as a warrant for restrictions on free speech. One would like to believe that bribery and influence peddling laws could handle the problem of corruption without having to restrict political communication and where, in such cases, guilt would have to be proved rather than imputed. Further corruption of the system by laundering foreign funds is easily prohibited with laws that do not infringe on the free speech rights of candidates and their legal contributors...
eBook - ePubWhen Freedom Speaks
The Boundaries and the Boundlessness of Our First Amendment Right
- Lynn Greenky(Author)
- 2022(Publication Date)
- Brandeis University Press(Publisher)
...The Citizens United case presaged the explosion of super PAC s. By a bare majority of five to four, the court concluded that banning a corporation or a union from directly funding speech that expressly advocated for the election or defeat of a candidate was censorship fortified by criminal penalties. It reiterated the well-known and acknowledged necessity of speech as an essential mechanism of democracy. The freedom to speak, the court said, “is a precondition to enlightened self-government and a necessary means to protect it.” 9 And most importantly, the “First Amendment has its fullest and most urgent application to speech uttered during a campaign for political office.” 10 The majority dismissed concerns articulated by the dissent about undue corporate influence on the political process. Rather, the court insisted that pivotal to First Amendment protection is the recognition that the speaker’s identity should not determine whether or not the speech can be suppressed. To restrict speech based on the speaker’s identity, wrote the majority, was too often a back door to control the content of speech. It would privilege some speech over other speech, which is an obvious transgression of First Amendment principles. Moreover, the court explained that corporations and unions, like individuals, make valuable contributions to the marketplace of ideas. 11 Citizens United would not face criminal penalties for accepting donations directly from corporations to finance the express advocacy promoted in Hillary: The Movie. The court declared that the pre-2010 ban on express advocacy financed by and through a corporation was unconstitutional; however, these contributions can only be used for independent expenditures that are not coordinated with a candidate or political party...
eBook - ePubCampaigns and Elections American Style
The Changing Landscape of Political Campaigns
- Candice J. Nelson, James A. Thurber(Authors)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...The FEC disagreed and Citizens United sued. After a district court sided with the FEC, Citizens United appealed (through an expedited review process established in BCRA) to the Supreme Court, which heard initial oral arguments on the electioneering communication questions in March 2009. In an unusual move, instead of issuing a decision, the court ordered the parties to file additional briefs and appear again for a second round of oral arguments. Among other questions, the court asked whether, in order to rule on whether Citizens United’s film qualified as an electioneering communication and, as such, had to be paid for with hard money (i.e., by a PAC rather than Citizens United itself), the court should reconsider its 1990 opinion in Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce. 26 In Austin, the court determined that political speech could be restricted based on the speaker’s corporate status. Austin essentially confirmed that corporations could not spend funds to influence federal elections. Once the court broadened Citizens United to include not only the status of the electioneering communication provision but also the question of corporate-funded independent expenditures, the case transformed from addressing the relatively narrow question of whether the electioneering communication provision applied to limited-distribution films, to considering the much larger question of corporate independent expenditures in general. When the court issued its ruling, it spurred a policy and public debate over campaign finance issues perhaps never before seen in the United States. Citizens United and corporate political spending were suddenly the topic of sustained national news and cultural importance that continue to this day...
eBook - ePubParty On!
Political Parties from Hamilton and Jefferson to Trump
- John Kenneth White, Matthew R. Kerbel(Authors)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Citizens United also had its own political action committee, and if that entity had been employed to promote the film, it would not have violated the provisions of McCain-Feingold. 75 But the Supreme Court decided to issue a much broader ruling. In its five-to-four decision, the Court sought to demonstrate that the First Amendment as conceived by the Founders included the right for corporations to engage in free, unregulated speech. 76 By making it a felony for corporations to expressly advocate either the election or defeat of candidates (either 30 days before a primary or 60 days prior to a general election), the Court determined that this portion of McCain-Feingold violated the First Amendment and was therefore unconstitutional. 77 Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy declared: No sufficient governmental issues justified limits on the political speech of non-profit corporations…. For these reasons, political speech must prevail against laws that would suppress it, whether by design or inadvertence…. There is simply no support for the view that the First Amendment, as originally understood, would permit the suppression of political speech by media corporations. 78 Chief Justice Roberts agreed, saying, “The First Amendment protects more than just the individual on a soapbox and the lonely pamphleteer.” 79 The Court also rejected the argument that corporate political speech was inherently corrupt. Reversing the decision in Buckley v. Valeo that found otherwise, Justice Kennedy wrote, “[W]e now conclude that independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.” 80 Kennedy added: Our Nation’s speech dynamic is changing, and informative voices should not have to circumvent onerous restrictions to exercise their First Amendment rights. Speakers have become adept at presenting citizens with sound bites, talking points, and scripted messages that dominate the 24-hour news cycle...
eBook - ePubLaw and Ethics for Today's Journalist
A Concise Guide
- Joe Mathewson(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...12 _____________ _____________ _____________ Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission “Factions should be checked by permitting them all to speak, and by entrusting the people to judge what is true and what isfalse.” —Justice Anthony Kennedy, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 2010 There’s another aspect of the First Amendment, probably not envisioned by the Founding Fathers but now enormously important in American life. For journalists, especially those covering politics and government, this is blackletter law: corporations, too, have the right of free expression. Opening Wedge In 1976, the attorney general of Massachusetts, Francis X. Bellotti, informed two major banks and three corporations that he intended to enforce a state statute forbidding them to make expenditures to influence the vote on a referendum. At issue was a proposition to authorize a graduated state income tax on individuals to which the businesses were opposed. So they sued Attorney General Bellotti to have the statute declared unconstitutional as violative of the First and Fourteenth Amendments. However, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts upheld the statute, noting that banks and corporations were authorized to spend to influence a referendum under the statute only if the referendum had a material bearing on their business or property, and the court saw none. But the companies petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to review the federal constitutional issue. On First Amendment grounds, the Supreme Court reversed, though only by 5–4. For the majority in First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, 435 U.S. 765 (1978), Justice Lewis Powell wrote: If the speakers here were not corporations, no one would suggest that the State could silence their proposed speech. It is the type of speech indispensable to decisionmaking in a democracy, and this is no less true because the speech comes from a corporation rather than an individual...
eBook - ePubPolitical Communication & Strategy
Consequences of the 2014 Midterm Elections
- Tauna S. Sisco, Jennifer C. Lucas, Christopher J. Galdieri(Authors)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- University of Akron Press(Publisher)
...During this same period, however, PACs and other outside groups made independent expenditures totaling less than $15 million. 2 The Citizens United decision unleashed the prospect of potentially unlimited independent expenditures in campaigns and brought this aspect of outside spending into focus for those who participate in and study congressional elections. “Taken together, Citizens United and SpeechNow result in donors being able to make unlimited contributions to independent-expenditure-only groups, which in turn can make unlimited expenditures to advocate expressly for the election or defeat of candidates (or virtually any other political speech)” so long as such expenditures are not expressly coordinated with a candidate or campaign (Farrar-Myers and Skinner 2012). 3 With independent-expenditure-only committees given the judicial green light to spend freely, the level of independent expenditures by outside groups in congressional elections skyrocketed in 2010, the first election after Citizens United, and then again in 2012, the first election where groups had an entire election cycle to plan and fundraise. Outside groups spent approximately $540 million in all congressional elections combined in 2010. The amount increased to nearly $715 million in 2012 and over $800 million in the most recent midterm elections. 4 A parallel phenomenon is that the reach of independent groups is becoming more expansive. In 2004 only 7 congressional races saw at least $1 million spent on them from outside groups; in 2012 there were 8 races altogether where the outside-group spending exceeded $10 million, with another 61 where the spending was between $1 million and $10 million...
