WASHINGTON, D. C. – The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case filed by Cincinnati Republicans JD Vance and Steve Chabot that seeks to overturn limits on how much political parties can spend in coordination with federal candidates.
The lawsuit filed by Vance, who is currently the nation’s vice president, and longtime congressman Chabot, who lost his 2022 re-election bid to Democrat Greg Landsman, contends the spending limits violate First Amendment free speech rights. The National Republican Senatorial Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee joined them in the case.
It is likely to be argued this fall, with a decision next year.
“The government should not restrict a party committee’s support for its own candidates,” said a statement from the NRSC and NRCC welcoming the court’s decision to hear the case. “Coordinated spending continues to be a critical part of winning campaigns, and the NRSC and NRCC will ensure we are in the strongest possible position to win in 2026 and beyond.”
The organizations’ Democratic counterparts and the Democratic National Committee had urged the court not to take up the case. They filed a brief that said Republicans have spent decades trying to eliminate statutory limits on political party expenditures that are coordinated with candidates’ campaigns, which was settled law due to past Supreme Court decisions.
The Democratic organizations said the First Amendment has not changed since the past cases and lower courts rejected the petitioners’ arguments. They asked that they be allowed to be intervenors in the case.”
“Politics is too expensive—and too important—for the Democratic Party Committees’ approach to raising and spending money to be improvised from scratch each cycle,“ their legal brief said. Fundraising strategies are perfected over time, and spending priorities are adopted to maximize the value of every dollar.”
Ohio attorney general Dave Yost led a group of his Republican counterparts in a legal brief that urged the court to take up the case.
“Because these limits do not serve an anti-corruption purpose, and also because they are not closely drawn to meet such an interest, the limits at issue in this case violate the Free Speech Clause,” it said. “The law restricts the amount parties can spend in coordination with their chosen candidates. That spending limitation amounts to a speech limitation.”
A statement from Common Cause, a non-partisan organization that advocates government reforms, said the case has the potential to undermine basic safeguards against corruption and deepen the influence of big money in our democracy.
It said that since the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which allowed corporations and unions to spend unlimited amounts on political advertising and other forms of electioneering, “we’ve seen how wealthy billionaires can buy influence and power at the expense of everyday people.
“This court has shown again and again that it is hostile to campaign finance reform and blind to the consequences, and its decision to take up this case is just the latest example,” said the statement from the group’s president and CEO, Virginia Kase Solomón, president and CEO of Common Cause. “We need a new national conversation about money in politics, but that conversation should be led by the people and Congress, not a court that treats democracy like an afterthought. Striking down one of the last guardrails in our campaign finance laws is not a solution. It’s surrender.”
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