WASHINGTON, Dec 9 (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court wrestled on Tuesday with a Republican-led bid to strike down on free speech grounds federal limits on spending by political parties in coordination with electoral candidates in a case involving Vice President JD Vance.
The justices heard arguments in the case, which centers on whether federal limits on coordinated campaign spending violate the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment protection against government abridgment of freedom of speech.
President Donald Trump’s administration argued in support of the challenge, which was brought by plaintiffs including two Republican committees as well as his vice president Vance, who was running for the U.S. Senate in Ohio when the case began, and Republican former congressman Steve Chabot.
The challengers appealed a lower court’s ruling that upheld restrictions on the amount of money parties can spend on campaigns with input from candidates they support, formally known as coordinated party expenditure limits. The case is being argued with the November 2026 midterm elections looming as Republicans seek maintain control of both chambers of Congress.
“The coordinated party spending limits are at war with this court’s recent First Amendment cases,” Noel Francisco, a lawyer for the Republican challengers, told the justices.
The Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 regulates fundraising and spending in U.S. elections by limiting the amount that can be spent on a candidate, with the aim of preventing corruption.
Under that law, spending by a political party to advocate for or against a candidate that is not coordinated with a candidate’s campaign is considered an “independent expenditure” – and not subject to amount limits. Contributions that are coordinated between a party and a campaign, however, are restricted.
Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor lamented the court’s prior rulings against campaign finance limits, noting the large sums now collected by presidential candidates for both main parties.
“Once we take off coordinated expenditure limits, then what’s left? What’s left is nothing. No control whatsoever,” Sotomayor said.
Francisco said that there is no suggestion of quid pro quo corruption – meaning a favor for a favor.
“More speech,” Francisco told Sotomayor, “is always better than less.”
Sotomayor appeared to invoke billionaire Tesla CEO Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, who spent nearly $300 million to back Trump’s presidential campaign and other Republicans last year and quickly emerged as a powerful force in the White House after Trump was elected. Musk led the so-called Department of Government Efficiency before leaving the administration in May.
“You mean to suggest that the fact that one major donor to the current president – the most major donor to the current president – got a very lucrative job immediately upon election from the new administration, does not give the appearance of quid pro quo?” Sotomayor asked Francisco.
“I have a hard time thinking that his salary that he drew from the federal government was an effective, quid pro quo bribery, which may be why nobody has even remotely suggested that,” Francisco responded.
“Maybe not the salary, but certainly, the lucrative government contracts might be,” Sotomayor said.
Sarah Harris, arguing for Trump’s administration, said the true motivation behind the federal spending limits at issue was not an attempt to prevent quid pro quo corruption, but rather an “impermissible judgment” by Congress and incumbent candidates to prescribe “how much money should be spent in a particular election context.”
Because the Federal Election Commission under Trump has declined to defend the restriction at issue, the court appointed lawyer Roman Martinez to do so. It also permitted three Democratic groups to defend the lower court’s decision.
THE MOOTNESS ARGUMENT
Martinez said the case must be thrown out because Vance has no concrete plan to run again as a political candidate and there is no credible threat of enforcement of the law.
“No one thinks President Trump is going to enforce this law and target his own vice president,” Martinez said.
The spending limits at issue vary based on the population of the state where the candidate is running for office, lower in states with smaller populations and higher in those with larger populations. In 2024, restrictions ranged from around $123,000 to $3.7 million for Senate candidates and from around $62,000 to $123,000 for House of Representatives candidates.
Liberal Justice Elena Kagan said coordinated contributions are more valuable to individual candidates than money that goes to a Super PAC, a type of political action committee that can solicit and spend unlimited sums – because a Super PAC may decide to put some money toward priorities that differ from the candidate’s campaign.
CITIZENS UNITED PRECEDENT
The Supreme Court in several rulings since 2010 has chipped away at campaign finance laws. In a landmark decision called Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the court in 2010 struck down federal limits on independent expenditures as a First Amendment violation, enabling corporations and other outside groups to spend unlimited amounts of money on elections.
The court in 2014 then struck down limits on the overall amount an individual could spend on federal political contributions, also on First Amendment grounds.
Francisco argued that the case was not moot. The defenders of the law in the case would have to show “that it is impossible to grant either Vice President Vance or the committees any effective relief.”
“But there’s no evidence that the vice president has abandoned his intention to run for federal office in 2028. To the contrary, he has an active statement of candidacy, an active Senate campaign committee that’s already raised $50,000 in this year alone, and at least 15 of the last 18 vice presidents have gone on to run for the presidency,” Francisco said.
The Cincinnati-based U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in 2024 upheld the limits.
Conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh voiced concern that “the combination of campaign finance laws and this court’s decisions over the years have together reduced the power of political parties as compared to outside groups, with negative effects on our constitutional democracy.”
A ruling is expected by the end of June.
(Reporting by John Kruzel in Washington and Andrew Chung in New York; Editing by Will Dunham)
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