Buckley v. Valeo
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| Buckley v. Valeo | |||||||||||||
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| Argued November 10, 1975 Decided January 30, 1976 |
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| Holding | |||||||||||||
| The Court upheld federal limits on campaign contributions and ruled that spending money to influence elections is a form of constitutionally protected free speech. | |||||||||||||
| Court membership | |||||||||||||
| Chief Justice: Warren E. Burger Associate Justices: William J. Brennan, Potter Stewart, Byron White, Thurgood Marshall, Harry Blackmun, Lewis Franklin Powell, Jr., William Rehnquist, John Paul Stevens |
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| Case opinions | |||||||||||||
| Per curiam. |
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| Laws applied | |||||||||||||
| U.S. Const. amend. I | |||||||||||||
Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1 (1976), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States upheld federal limits on campaign contributions and ruled that spending money to influence elections is a form of constitutionally protected free speech. The court also stated candidates can give unlimited amounts of money to their own campaigns.
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[edit] History
Congress passed the Federal Election Campaign Act in 1971 (creating the FEC), amended Subtitle H of the Internal Revenue Code of 1954 (amended in 1974), and passed the Presidential Election Campaign Fund Act. These were signed into law by President Richard Nixon, becoming the first pieces of modern campaign finance reform legislation. The key parts limited contributions to candidates for federal office (2 USC §441a), required the disclosure of political contributions (2 USC §434), provided for the public financing of presidential elections (IRC Subtitle H), limited expenditures by candidates and associated committees, except for presidential candidates who accepted public funding (formerly 18 U.S.C. §608(c)(1)(C-F)), limited independent expenditures to $1000 (formerly 18 U.S.C. §608e); limited candidate expenditures from personal funds (formerly 18 U.S.C. §608a), and fixed the method of appointing members to the FEC (formerly 2 U.S.C. §437c(a)(1)(A-C)). A lawsuit was filed in the District Court for the D.C., on January 2, 1975, by Senator James L. Buckley of New York, former Senator and 1968 presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota, and others. The suit was filed against Francis R. Valeo, the Secretary of the Senate and ex officio member of the FEC who represented the U.S. federal government. The court denied plaintiffs' request for declaratory and injunctive relief. Plaintiffs then appealed to the Court of Appeals.
The petitioners sought for the district court to overturn the key provisions outlined above. They argued that the legislation was in violation of the 1st and 5th Amendment rights to freedom of expression and due process, respectively.
[edit] Decision
In a lengthy per curiam decision issued on January 30, 1976, the court sustained the Act's limits on individual contributions, as well as the disclosure and reporting provisions and the public financing scheme. However, the limitations on campaign expenditures, on independent expenditures by individuals and groups, and on expenditures by a candidate from his personal funds were found to be constitutionally infirm in that they placed severe restrictions on protected expression and association, yet lacked any compelling countervailing government interest necessary to sustain them.
[edit] Criticism
Some argue that this precedent is incompatible with democracy, because it allows those with great wealth to effectively drown out the speech of those not able to influence election outcomes through large financial contributions and that money represents an unlawful barrier to political participation. Among those criticizing the decision on this line was philosopher John Rawls, who wrote that the Court's decision "runs the risk of endorsing the view that fair representation is representation according to the amount of influence effectively exerted." (See: wealth primary.)
On a somewhat different note, Justice Byron White, in dissent, argued that the entire law should have been upheld, in deference to Congress's greater knowledge and expertise on the issue. Organizations working to overturn Buckley include the National Voting Rights Institute, the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, and ReclaimDemocracy.org.
From the other side, some disagree vigorously with Buckley on the grounds that it sustained some limits on campaign contributions, which they argue are protected by the First Amendment as free speech. This position was advanced by Chief Justice Warren Burger in his dissent, who claimed that he could discern no constitutional difference between individual contributions and expenditures, as both are protected speech acts. Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, argued for overturning Buckley on these grounds, but were rebuffed in 2003's 5-4 decision in McConnell v. FEC, upholding the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 ("McCain-Feingold Bill"). This legislation included a prohibition on soft money as well as limits on independent expenditures by private groups.
