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The Roberts Court Knocks Down One of the Last Campaign Finance Rules

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30.06.2026

The Supreme Court on Tuesday struck down yet another campaign finance restriction in what has become its years-long aim to obliterate regulations governing money in politics. In a decision that broke down along party lines, the six Republican appointees lifted limits on how much parties and candidates could spend in coordination with each other. The decision will effectively allow wealthy donors to circumvent caps on direct giving to candidates by routing funds through the party, which can now spend the entire sum in coordination with the candidate.

The majority’s decision, authored by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, hangs the ruling on the First Amendment. To restrict how a political party coordinates with one of its candidates—whether to consult on an ad or to pay the pizza bill—now infringes on the party’s free speech rights. To reach this conclusion, the majority overruled both Congress’ judgment about how to stop political corruption and its own precedent in a case just 25 years ago.

“The political party coordinated-expenditure limits impose a ‘stifling effect on the ability of the party to do what it exists to do,'” Kavanaugh wrote, arguing that the coordination limits imposed by Congress some 50 years ago are too burdensome.

In a dissent joined by the Democratic appointees, Justice Elena Kagan warned that the decision endangers our democratic system of government. As it has in other campaign finance cases, she wrote, the majority “jettisons a rule needed to protect our democracy’s integrity.”

This court has repeatedly blocked Congress’ attempts to limit political spending.


Indeed, with Tuesday’s opinion in NRSC v. FEC, the Roberts Court has, once again, nullified Congress’ judgment about how to stop corruption and given wealthy donors another vehicle to influence elections and extract favors from politicians. Thanks to the court’s past rulings, our elections are already defined by massive spending from the ultra-wealthy and our politics is already reoriented toward repaying those oligarchs for their........

© Mother Jones