OCTOBER TERM, 1999
Syllabus
NIXON, ATTORNEY GENERAL OF MISSOURI, ET AL.
v. SHRINK
MISSOURI GOVERNMENT PAC ET AL.
CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE EIGHTH
CIRCUIT
No. 98-963. Argued October 5, 1999-Decided January 24, 2000
Respondents Shrink Missouri Government PAC, a political action
committee, and Zev David Fredman, a candidate for the 1998
Republican nomination for Missouri state auditor, filed suit,
alleging that a Missouri statute imposing limits ranging from $275
to $1,075 on contributions to candidates for state office violated
their First and Fourteenth Amendment rights. Shrink Missouri gave
Fredman $1,025 in 1997, and $50 in 1998, and represented that,
without the statutory limitation, it would contribute more. Fredman
alleged he could campaign effectively only with more generous
contributions than the statute allowed. On crossmotions for summary
judgment, the District Court sustained the statute. Applying
Buckley v.
Valeo, 424 U. S. 1 (per
curiam), the court found adequate support for the law in the
proposition that large contributions raise suspicions of influence
peddling tending to undermine citizens' confidence in government
integrity. The court rejected respondents' contention that
inflation since
Buckley's approval of a federal $1,000
restriction meant that the state limit of $1,075 for a statewide
office could not be constitutional today. In reversing, the Eighth
Circuit found that
Buckley had articulated and applied a
strict scrutiny standard of review, and held that Missouri had to
demonstrate that it had a compelling interest and that the
contribution limits at issue were narrowly drawn to serve that
interest. Treating Missouri's claim of a compelling interest in
avoiding the corruption or the perception of corruption caused by
candidates' acceptance of large campaign contributions as
insufficient by itself to satisfy strict scrutiny, the court
required demonstrable evidence that genuine problems resulted from
contributions in amounts greater than the statutory limits. It
ruled that the State's evidence was inadequate for this
purpose.
Held: Buckley is authority for comparable state limits on
contributions to state political candidates, and those limits need
not be pegged to the precise dollar amounts approved in
Buckley. Pp. 385-398.
(a) The
Buckley Court held,
inter alia, that a
Federal Election Campaign Act provision placing a $1,000 annual
ceiling on independent expenditures linked to specific candidates
for federal office infringed speech and association guarantees of
the First Amendment and the
378
Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth, but upheld other
provisions limiting contributions by individuals to any single
candidate to $1,000 per election. P. 385.
(b) In addressing the speech claim, the
Buckley Court
explicitly rejected both intermediate scrutiny for communicative
action, see
United States v.
O'Brien, 391 U. S. 367, and the
similar standard applicable to merely time, place, and manner
restrictions, see,
e. g., Adderley v.
Florida, 385 U.
S. 39, and instead referred generally to "the exacting scrutiny
required by the First Amendment," 424 U. S., at 16. The Court then
drew a line between expenditures and contributions, treating
expenditure restrictions as direct restraints on speech,
id., at 19, but saying, in effect, that limiting
contributions left communication significantly unimpaired,
id., at 20-21. The Court flagged a similar difference
between the impacts of expenditure and contribution limits on
association rights,
id., at 22; see also
id., at 28,
and later made that distinction explicit,
e. g.,
Federal Election Comm'n v.
Massachusetts Citizens for
Life, Inc., 479
U. S. 238, 259-260. Thus, under
Buckley's standard of
scrutiny, a contribution limit involving significant interference
with associational rights could survive if the Government
demonstrated that regulating contributions was a means "closely
drawn" to match a "sufficiently important interest," 424 U. S., at
25, though the dollar amount of the limit need not be "fine
tun[ed],"
id., at 30. While
Buckley did not attempt
to parse distinctions between the speech and associational
standards of scrutiny for contribution limits, the Court made clear
that such restrictions bore more heavily on associational rights
than on speech rights, and thus proceeded on the understanding that
a contribution limitation surviving a claim of associational
abridgment would survive a speech challenge as well. The Court
found the prevention of corruption and the appearance of corruption
to be a constitutionally sufficient justification for the
contribution limits at issue.
Id., at 25-28. Pp.
386-389.
(c) In defending its statute, Missouri espouses those same
interests of preventing corruption and the appearance of it. Even
without
Buckley, there would be no serious question about
the legitimacy of these interests, which underlie bribery and
antigratuity statutes. Rather, respondents take the State to task
for failing to justify the invocation of those interests with
empirical evidence of actually corrupt practices or of a perception
among Missouri voters that unrestricted contributions must have
been exerting a covertly corrosive influence. The state statute is
not void, however, for want of evidence. The quantum of empirical
evidence needed to satisfy heightened judicial scrutiny of
legislative judgments will vary up or down with the novelty and
plausibility of the justification raised.
Buckley
demonstrates that the dangers of large,
379
corrupt contributions and the suspicion that large contributions
are corrupt are neither novel nor implausible. See 424 U. S., at
27, and n. 28. Respondents are wrong in arguing that this Court has
"supplemented" its
Buckley holding with a new requirement
that governments enacting contribution limits must demonstrate that
the recited harms are real, not merely conjectural, a contention
for which respondents rely principally on
Colorado Republican
Federal Campaign Comm. v.
Federal Election Comm'n,
518 U. S. 604.
This Court has never accepted mere conjecture as adequate to carry
a First Amendment burden, and
Colorado Republican deals not
with a government's burden to justify contribution limits, but with
limits on independent expenditures by political parties, which the
principal opinion expressly distinguished from contribution limits.
Id., at 615-618. In any event, this case does not present a
close call requiring further definition of whatever the State's
evidentiary obligation may be. Although the record does not show
that the Missouri Legislature relied on the evidence and findings
accepted in
Buckley, the evidence introduced by petitioners
or cited by the lower courts in this action and a prior case
involving a related ballot initiative is enough to show that the
substantiation of the congressional concerns reflected in
Buckley has its counterpart in support of the Missouri law.
Moreover, although majority votes do not, as such, defeat First
Amendment protections, the statewide vote adopting the initiative
attested to the public perception that contribution limits are
necessary to combat corruption and the appearance thereof. A more
extensive evidentiary documentation might be necessary if
respondents had made any showing of their own to cast doubt on the
apparent implications of
Buckley's evidence and the record
here. However, the nearest they come to challenging these
conclusions is their invocation of academic studies that are
contradicted by other studies. Pp. 390-395.
(d) There is no support for respondents' various arguments that
the Missouri limitations are so different in kind from those
sustained in
Buckley as to raise essentially a new issue
about the adequacy of the Missouri statute's tailoring to serve its
purposes. Here, as in
Buckley, supra, at 21, there is no
indication that those limits have had any dramatic adverse effect
on the funding of campaigns and political associations, and thus
there is no showing that the limitations prevented candidates from
amassing the resources necessary for effective advocacy. Indeed,
the District Court found that since the Missouri limits became
effective, candidates for state office have been able to raise
funds sufficient to run effective campaigns, and that candidates
are still able to amass impressive campaign war chests. The
plausibility of these conclusions is buttressed by petitioners'
evidence that in the last election before the contributions became
effective, 97.62 percent of all contribu-
380
tors to candidates for state auditor made contributions of
$2,000 or less. Even assuming that the contribution limits affected
respondent Fredman's ability to wage a competitive campaign, a
showing of one affected individual does not point up a system of
suppressed political advocacy that would be unconstitutional under
Buckley. The District Court's conclusions and the supporting
evidence also suffice to answer respondents' variant claim that the
Missouri limits today differ in kind from
Buckley's owing to
inflation since that case was decided. Respondents' assumption that
Buckley set a minimum constitutional threshold for
contribution limits, which in dollars adjusted for loss of
purchasing power are now well above the lines drawn by Missouri, is
a fundamental misunderstanding of that case. The Court there
specifically rejected the contention that $1,000, or any other
amount, was a constitutional minimum, and instead asked whether the
contribution limitation was so low as to impede the ability of
candidates to amass the resources necessary for effective advocacy.
424 U. S., at 21. Such being the test, the issue in subsequent
cases cannot be truncated to a narrow question about the power of
the dollar. Pp. 395-397.
161 F.3d
519, reversed and remanded.
SOUTER, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which
REHNQUIST, C. J., and STEVENS, O'CONNOR, GINSBURG, and BREYER, JJ.,
joined. STEVENS, J., filed a concurring opinion,
post, p.
398. BREYER, J., filed a concurring opinion, in which GINSBURG, J.,
joined,
post, p. 399. KENNEDY, J., filed a dissenting
opinion,
post, p. 405. THOMAS, J., filed a dissenting
opinion, in which SCALIA, J., joined,
post, p. 410.
Jeremiah W Nixon, Attorney General of Missouri,
pro
se, argued the cause for petitioners. With him on the briefs
were
James R. Layton, State Solicitor,
Paul R.
Maguffee, Assistant Attorney General,
Carter G.
Phillips, Virginia A. Seitz, and
Joseph R.
Guerra.
Solicitor General Waxman argued the cause for the United States
as amicus curiae urging reversal. With him on the brief were Acting
Assistant Attorney General Ogden, Deputy Solicitor General
Underwood, Malcolm L. Stewart, Douglas N. Letter, and Michael Jay
Singer.
D. Bruce La Pierre argued the cause for respondents.
With him on the briefs for respondents Shrink Missouri
Government PAC et al. was
Patrie Lester. Deborah
Goldberg,
381
Burt Neuborne, and
Gerald P. Greiman filed briefs
for Joan Bray as respondent under this Court's Rule 12.6.*
JUSTICE SOUTER delivered the opinion of the Court.
The principal issues in this case are whether
Buckley
v.
Valeo, 424 U.
S. 1 (1976)
(per curiam), is authority for state limits
on contributions to state political candidates and
*Briefs of
amici curiae urging reversal were filed for
the State of Ohio et al. by
Betty D. Montgomery, Attorney
General of Ohio,
Edward B. Foley, State Solicitor,
David
M. Gormley, Iver A. Stridiron, Acting Attorney General of the
U. S. Virgin Islands, and by the Attorneys General for their
respective States as follows:
Barbara Ritchie of Alaska,
Janet Napolitano of Arizona,
Mark Pryor of Arkansas,
Ken Salazar of Colorado,
Richard Blumenthal of
Connecticut,
M. Jane Brady of Delaware,
Robert A.
Butterworth of Florida,
Margery S.
Bronster of
Hawaii,
Alan G.
Lance of Idaho,
Jeffrey A.
Modisett of Indiana,
Thomas J. Miller of
Iowa,
Carla J. Stovall of Kansas,
Albert B.
Chandler III of Kentucky,
Richard P. Ieyoub of
Louisiana,
Andrew Ketterer of Maine,
J. Joseph
Curran, Jr., of Maryland,
Thomas F.
Reilly of
Massachusetts,
Mike Hatch of Minnesota,
Joseph P.
Mazurek of Montana,
Patricia A. Madrid of New Mexico,
Eliot Spitzer of New York,
Michael F.
Easley
of North Carolina,
W A. Drew Edmondson of Oklahoma,
Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island,
Paul G.
Summers of Tennessee,
Jan Graham of Utah,
William
H. Sorrell of Vermont, and
Christine O.
Gregoire
of Washington; for Common Cause et al. by
Roger M. Witten,
Daniel H. Squire, Donald J. Simon, and
Fred
Wertheimer; for Public Citizen by
Alan B. Morrison and
David C.
Vladeck; for the Secretary of State of
Arkansas et al. by
Gregory Luke, John C.
Bonifaz, and
Brenda Wright; for Senator John F. Reed et al. by
Donald
B. Verrilli, Jr., Deanne E. Maynard, and
Gregory P.
Magarian; for Paul Allen Beck et al. by
Evan A. Davis;
and for Norman Dorsen et al. by
Charles S.
Sims.
Briefs of
amici curiae urging affirmance were filed for
the American Civil Liberties Union et al. by
Joel M. Gora
and
Steven R. Shapiro; for the First Amendment Project of
the Americans Back in Charge Foundation et al. by
Cleta D.
Mitchell and
Paul E. Sullivan; for Gun Owners of America
et al. by
William J. Olson and
John S.
Miles; for the James Madison Center for Free Speech by
James Bopp, Jr.; for the National Right to Life PAC State
Fund et al. by
Mr. Bopp; for the Pacific Legal Foundation et
al. by
Sharon L. Browne; for Senator Mitch McConnell et al.
by
Bobby R. Burchfield; and for U. S. Term Limits, Inc., by
Stephen J. Safranek.
382
whether the federal limits approved in
Buckley, with or
without adjustment for inflation, define the scope of permissible
state limitations today. We hold
Buckley to be authority for
comparable state regulation, which need not be pegged to
Buckley's dollars.
I
In 1994, the Legislature of Missouri enacted Senate Bill 650 to
restrict the permissible amounts of contributions to candidates for
state office. Mo. Rev. Stat. § 130.032 (1994). Before the statute
became effective, however, Missouri voters approved a ballot
initiative with even stricter contribution limits, effective
immediately. The United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth
Circuit then held the initiative's contribution limits
unconstitutional under the First Amendment,
Carver v.
Nixon, 72 F.3d
633, 645
(CA8 1995), cert. denied, 518 U. S. 1033
(1996), with the upshot that the previously dormant 1994 statute
took effect.
Shrink Missouri Government PAC v.
Adams,
161 F.3d
519, 520
(CA8 1998).
As amended in 1997, that statute imposes contribution limits
ranging from $250 to $1,000, depending on specified state office or
size of constituency. See Mo. Rev. Stat. § 130.032.1 (1998 Cum.
Supp.); 161 F. 3d, at 520. The particular provision challenged here
reads that
"[t]o elect an individual to the office of governor, lieutenant
governor, secretary of state, state treasurer, state auditor or
attorney general, [[t]he amount of contributions made by or
accepted from any person other than the candidate in anyone
election shall not exceed] one thousand dollars." Mo. Rev. Stat. §
130.032.1(1) (1998 Cum. Supp.).
The statutory dollar amounts are baselines for an adjustment
each even-numbered year, to be made "by multiplying the base year
amount by the cumulative consumer price
383
index ... and rounded to the nearest twenty-five-dollar amount,
for all years since January 1, 1995." § 130.032.2. When this suit
was filed, the limits ranged from a high of $1,075 for
contributions to candidates for statewide office (including state
auditor) and for any office where the population exceeded 250,000,
down to $275 for contributions to candidates for state
representative or for any office for which there were fewer than
100,000 people represented. 161
Respondents Shrink Missouri Government PAC, a political action
committee, and Zev David Fredman, a candidate for the 1998
Republican nomination for state auditor, sought to enjoin
enforcement of the contribution statute 1 as violating their First
and Fourteenth Amendment rights (presumably those of free speech,
association, and equal protection, although the complaint did not
so state). Shrink Missouri gave $1,025 to Fredman's candidate
committee in 1997, and another $50 in 1998. Shrink Missouri
represented that, without the limitation, it would contribute more
to the Fredman campaign. Fredman alleged he could campaign
effectively only with more generous contributions than § 130.032.1
allowed.
Shrink Missouri Government PAC v.
Adams, 5
F. Supp. 2d 734, 737 (ED Mo. 1998).
On cross-motions for summary judgment, the District Court
sustained the statute.
Id., at 742. Applying
Buckley
v.
Valeo, supra, the court found adequate support for the
law in the proposition that large contributions raise suspicions of
influence peddling tending to undermine citizens' confidence "in
the integrity of ... government." 5 F. Supp. 2d, at 738. The
District Court rejected respondents' con-
1 Respondents sued members of the Missouri Ethics Commission,
the Missouri attorney general, and the St. Louis County prosecuting
attorney.
Shrink Missouri Government PAC v.
Adams, 5
F. Supp. 2d 734, 737 (ED Mo. 1998).
384
tention that inflation since
Buckley's approval of a
federal $1,000 restriction meant that the state limit of $1,075 for
a statewide office could not be constitutional today. 5 F. Supp.
2d, at 740.
The Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit nonetheless enjoined
enforcement of the law pending appeal,
151 F.3d
763, 765 (1998), and ultimately reversed the District Court,
161 F. 3d, at 520. Finding that
Buckley had" 'articulated
and applied a strict scrutiny standard of review,'" the Court of
Appeals held that Missouri was bound to demonstrate "that it has a
compelling interest and that the contribution limits at issue are
narrowly drawn to serve that interest." 161 F. 3d, at 521 (quoting
Carver v.
Nixon, supra, at 637). The appeals court
treated Missouri's claim of a compelling interest "in avoiding the
corruption or the perception of corruption brought about when
candidates for elective office accept large campaign contributions"
as insufficient by itself to satisfy strict scrutiny. 161 F. 3d, at
521-522. Relying on Circuit precedent, see
Russell v.
Burris, 146 F.3d
563, 568
(CA8), cert. denied, 525 U. S. 1001 (1998);
Carver v.
Nixon, supra, at 638, the Court of Appeals
required
"some demonstrable evidence that there were genuine problems
that resulted from contributions in amounts greater than the limits
in place ....
"[T]he Buckley Court noted the perfidy that had been
uncovered in federal campaign financing in 1972 .... But we are
unwilling to extrapolate from those examples that in Missouri at
this time there is corruption or a perception of corruption from
'large' campaign contributions, without some evidence that such
problems really exist." 161 F. 3d, at 521-522 (citations
omitted).
The court thought that the only evidence presented by the State,
an affidavit from the cochairman of the state legislature's Interim
Joint Committee on Campaign Finance Reform when the statute was
passed, was inadequate to raise
385
a genuine issue of material fact about the State's alleged
interest in limiting campaign contributions.
Ibid.2
Given the large number of States that limit political
contributions, see generally Federal Election Commission, E.
Feigenbaum & J. Palmer, Campaign Finance Law 98 (1998), we
granted certiorari to review the congruence of the Eighth Circuit's
decision with
Buckley. 525 U. S. 1121 (1999). We
reverse.
II
The matters raised in
Buckley v.
Valeo, 424 U. S. 1 (1976)
(per
curiam), included claims that federal campaign finance
legislation infringed speech and association protections of the
First Amendment and the equal protection guarantee of the Fifth.
The Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971, 86 Stat. 3, as amended
by the Federal Election Campaign Act Amendments of 1974, 88 Stat.
1263, limited (and still limits) contributions by individuals to
any single candidate for federal office to $1,000 per election. 18
U. S. C. §§ 608(b)(1), (3) (1970 ed., Supp. IV);
Buckley v.
Valeo, supra, at 13. Until
Buckley struck it down,
the law also placed a $1,000 annual ceiling on independent
expenditures linked to specific candidates. 18 U. S. C. § 608(e)
(1970 ed., Supp. IV); 424 U. S., at 13. We found violations of the
First Amendment in the expenditure regulations, but held the
contribution restrictions constitutional.
Buckley v.
Valeo, supra.
2 Chief Judge Bowman also would have found the law invalid
because the contribution limits were severely tailored beyond any
need to serve the State's interest. Comparing the Missouri limits
with those considered in
Buckley, the Chief Judge said that
"[a]fter inflation, limits of $1,075, $525, and $275 cannot compare
with the $1,000 limit approved in
Buckley twenty-two years
ago," and "can only be regarded as 'too low to allow meaningful
participation in protected political speech and association.''' 161
F. 3d, at 522-523 (quoting
Day v.
Holahan, 34 F.3d
1356, 1366
(CA8 1994), cert. denied, 513 U. S. 1127
(1995)). Judge Ross, concurring in the judgment, did not join this
portion of Chief Judge Bowman's opinion. 161
Judge Gibson dissented from the panel's decision.
Ibid.
386
A
Precision about the relative rigor of the standard to review
contribution limits was not a pretense of the
Buckley per
curiam opinion. To be sure, in addressing the speech claim, we
explicitly rejected both
O'Brien intermediate scrutiny for
communicative action, see
United States v.
O'Brien,
391 U. S. 367 (1968), and the similar standard applicable to
merely time, place, and manner restrictions, see
Adderley v.
Florida, 385 U.
S. 39 (1966);
Cox v.
Louisiana, 379 U. S. 536 (1965);
Kovacs v.
Cooper, 336 U. S. 77 (1949). In
distinguishing these tests, the discussion referred generally to
"the exacting scrutiny required by the First Amendment,"
Buckley v.
Valeo, 424 U. S., at 16, and added that"
'the constitutional guarantee has its fullest and most urgent
application precisely to the conduct of campaigns for political
office,'"
id., at 15 (quoting
Monitor Patriot Co. v.
Roy, 401 U. S.
265, 272 (1971)).
We then, however, drew a line between expenditures and
contributions, treating expenditure restrictions as direct
restraints on speech, 424 U. S., at 19, which nonetheless suffered
little direct effect from contribution limits:
"[A] limitation upon the amount that anyone person or group may
contribute to a candidate or political committee entails only a
marginal restriction upon the contributor's ability to engage in
free communication. A contribution serves as a general expression
of support for the candidate and his views, but does not
communicate the underlying basis for the support. The quantity of
communication by the contributor does not increase perceptibly with
the size of his contribution, since the expression rests solely on
the undifferentiated symbolic act of contributing. At most, the
size of the contribution provides a very rough index of the
intensity of the contributor's support for the candidate. A
limitation on the amount of money a person may give to a candidate
or
387
campaign organization thus involves little direct restraint on
his political communication, for it permits the symbolic expression
of support evidenced by a contribution but does not in any way
infringe the contributor's freedom to discuss candidates and
issues." Id., at 20-21 (footnote omitted).
We thus said, in effect, that limiting contributions left
communication significantly unimpaired.
We flagged a similar difference between expenditure and
contribution limitations in their impacts on the association right.
While an expenditure limit "precludes most associations from
effectively amplifying the voice of their adherents,"
id.,
at 22 (thus interfering with the freedom of the adherents as well
as the association,
ibid.), the contribution limits "leave
the contributor free to become a member of any political
association and to assist personally in the association's efforts
on behalf of candidates,"
ibid.; see also
id., at 28.
While we did not then say in so many words that different standards
might govern expenditure and contribution limits affecting
associational rights, we have since then said so explicitly in
Federal Election Comm'n v.
Massachusetts Citizens for
Life, Inc., 479
U. S. 238, 259-260 (1986): "We have consistently held that
restrictions on contributions require less compelling justification
than restrictions on independent spending." It has, in any event,
been plain ever since
Buckley that contribution limits would
more readily clear the hurdles before them. Cf.
Colorado
Republican Federal Campaign Comm. v.
Federal Election
Comm'n, 518 U. S. 604, 610 (1996) (opinion of BREYER, J.)
(noting that in campaign finance case law, "[t]he provisions that
the Court found constitutional mostly imposed
contribution
limits" (emphasis in original)). Thus, under
Buckley's
standard of scrutiny, a contribution limit involving "significant
interference" with associational rights, 424 U. S., at 25 (internal
quotation marks omitted), could survive if the Government
demonstrated that contribution regulation was "closely drawn"
388
to match a "sufficiently important interest,"
ibid.,
though the dollar amount of the limit need not be "fine tun[ed],"
id., at 30.3
While we did not attempt to parse distinctions between the
speech and association standards of scrutiny for contribution
limits, we did make it clear that those restrictions bore more
heavily on the associational right than on freedom to speak.
Id., at 24-25. We consequently proceeded on the
understanding that a contribution limitation surviving a claim of
associational abridgment would survive a speech challenge as well,
and we held the standard satisfied by the contribution limits under
review.
"[T]he prevention of corruption and the appearance of
corruption" was found to be a "constitutionally sufficient
justification,"
id., at 25-26:
"To the extent that large contributions are given to secure a
political quid pro quo from current and potential office
holders, the integrity of our system of representative democracy is
undermined ....
"Of almost equal concern as the danger of actual quid pro
quo arrangements is the impact of the appearance of corruption
stemming from public awareness of the opportunities for abuse
inherent in a regime of large individual financial contributions
.... Congress could legiti-
3 The quoted language addressed the correlative overbreadth
challenge.
On the point of classifying the standard of scrutiny, compare
Roberts v.
United States Jaycees, 468 U. S. 609, 623 (1984)
("Infringements on [the right to associate for expressive purposes]
may be justified by regulations adopted to serve compelling state
interests, unrelated to the suppression of ideas, that cannot be
achieved through means significantly less restrictive of
associational freedoms");
NAACP v.
Button, 371 U. S. 415, 438 (1963)
("The decisions of this Court have consistently held that only a
compelling state interest in the regulation of a subject within the
State's constitutional power to regulate can justify limiting First
Amendment freedoms");
NAACP v.
Alabama ex rel.
Patterson, 357 U.
S. 449,460-461 (1958) ("[S]tate action which may have the
effect of curtailing the freedom to associate is subject to the
closest scrutiny").
389
mately conclude that the avoidance of the appearance of improper
influence 'is also critical ... if confidence in the system of
representative Government is not to be eroded to a disastrous
extent.'" Id., at 26-27 (quoting Civil Service Comm'n
v. Letter Carriers, 413 U. S. 548, 565
(1973)).
See also
Federal Election Comm'n v.
National
Conservative Political Action Comm., 470 U. S. 480, 497 (1985)
("Corruption is a subversion of the political process. Elected
officials are influenced to act contrary to their obligations of
office by the prospect of financial gain to themselves or infusions
of money into their campaigns");
Federal Election Comm'n v.
National Right to Work Comm., 459 U. S. 197, 208 (1982)
(noting that Government interests in preventing corruption or the
appearance of corruption "directly implicate 'the integrity of our
electoral process, and, not less, the responsibility of the
individual citizen for the successful functioning of that process'"
(quoting
United States v.
Automobile Workers,
352 U. S. 567,
570 (1957)));
First Nat. Bank of Boston v.
Bellotti,
435 U. S. 765,
788, n. 26 (1978) ("The importance of the governmental interest in
preventing [corruption] has never been doubted").
In speaking of "improper influence" and "opportunities for
abuse" in addition to
"quid pro quo arrangements," we
recognized a concern not confined to bribery of public officials,
but extending to the broader threat from politicians too compliant
with the wishes of large contributors. These were the obvious
points behind our recognition that the Congress could
constitutionally address the power of money "to influence
governmental action" in ways less "blatant and specific" than
bribery.
Buckley v.
Valeo, 424 U. S., at 28.4
4 In arguing that the
Buckley standard should not be
relaxed, respondents Shrink Missouri and Fredman suggest that a
candidate like Fredman suffers because contribution limits favor
incumbents over challengers. Brief for Respondents Shrink Missouri
Government PAC et al. 23-24. This is essentially an equal
protection claim, which
Buckley squarely
390
B
In defending its own statute, Missouri espouses those same
interests of preventing corruption and the appearance of it that
flows from munificent campaign contributions. Even without the
authority of
Buckley, there would be no serious question
about the legitimacy of the interests claimed, which, after all,
underlie bribery and antigratuity statutes. While neither law nor
morals equate all political contributions, without more, with
bribes, we spoke in
Buckley of the perception of corruption
"inherent in a regime of large individual financial contributions"
to candidates for public office,
id., at 27, as a source of
concern "almost equal" to
quid pro quo improbity,
ibid. The public interest in countering that perception was,
indeed, the entire answer to the overbreadth claim raised in the
Buckley case.
Id., at 30. This made perfect sense.
Leave the perception of impropriety unanswered, and the cynical
assumption that large donors call the tune could jeopardize the
willingness of voters to take part in democratic governance.
Democracy works "only if the people have faith in those who govern,
and that faith is bound to be shattered when high officials and
their appointees engage in activities which arouse suspicions of
malfeasance and corruption."
United States v.
Mississippi
Valley Generating Co., 364 U. S. 520, 562
(1961).
Although respondents neither challenge the legitimacy of these
objectives nor call for any reconsideration of
Buckley, they
take the State to task, as the Court of Appeals did, for failing to
justify the invocation of those interests with empirical evidence
of actually corrupt practices or of a per-
faced. We found no support for the proposition that an
incumbent's advantages were leveraged into something significantly
more powerful by contribution limitations applicable to all
candidates, whether veterans or upstarts, 424 U. S., at 31-35.
Since we do not relax
Buckley's standard, no more need be
said about respondents' argument, though we note that nothing in
the record here gives respondents a stronger argument than the
Buckley petitioners made.
391
ception among Missouri voters that unrestricted contributions
must have been exerting a covertly corrosive influence. The state
statute is not void, however, for want of evidence.
The quantum of empirical evidence needed to satisfy heightened
judicial scrutiny of legislative judgments will vary up or down
with the novelty and plausibility of the justification raised.
Buckley demonstrates that the dangers of large, corrupt
contributions and the suspicion that large contributions are
corrupt are neither novel nor implausible. The opinion noted that
"the deeply disturbing examples surfacing after the 1972 election
demonstrate that the problem [of corruption] is not an illusory
one." 424 U. S., at 27, and n. 28. Although we did not ourselves
marshal the evidence in support of the congressional concern, we
referred to "a number of the abuses" detailed in the Court of
Appeals's decision,
ibid., which described how corporations,
wellfinanced interest groups, and rich individuals had made large
contributions, some of which were illegal under existing law,
others of which reached at least the verge of bribery. See
Buckley v.
Valeo, 519 F.2d
821, 839-840, and nn. 36-38
(CADC 1975). The evidence
before the Court of Appeals described public revelations by the
parties in question more than sufficient to show why voters would
tend to identify a big donation with a corrupt purpose.
While
Buckley's evidentiary showing exemplifies a
sufficient justification for contribution limits, it does not speak
to what may be necessary as a minimum.5 As to that, respond-
5 Cf.
Federal Election Comm'n v.
National Right to
Work Comm., 459 U. S. 197, 210 (1982) ("Nor will we
second-guess a legislative determination as to the need for
prophylactic measures where corruption is the evil feared");
First Nat. Bank of Boston v.
Bellotti, 435 U. S. 765, 788, n. 26
(1978); California Medical Assn. v.
Federal Election
Comm'n, 453 U. S.
182, 194-195 (1981) (noting that
Buckley held that
contribution limits "served the important governmental interests in
preventing the corruption or appearance of corruption of the
political process that might result if such contributions were not
restrained");
Citizens Against Rent Control! Coalition for Fair
Housing v.
Berkeley, 454 U. S. 290, 296-297
(1981)
392
ents are wrong in arguing that in the years since
Buckley
came down we have "supplemented" its holding with a new requirement
that governments enacting contribution limits must "'demonstrate
that the recited harms are real, not merely conjectural,'" Brief
for Respondents Shrink Missouri Government PAC et al. 26 (quoting
United States v.
Treasury Employees, 513 U. S. 454, 475 (1995)
(in turn quoting
Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. v.
FCC, 512 U. S.
622, 664 (1994))), a contention for which respondents rely
principally on
Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Comm. v.
Federal Election Comm'n, 518 U. S. 604 (1996). We
have never accepted mere conjecture as adequate to carry a First
Amendment burden, and
Colorado Republican did not deal with
a government's burden to justify limits on contributions. Although
the principal opinion in that case charged the Government with
failure to show a real risk of corruption,
id., at 616
(opinion of BREYER, J.), the issue in question was limits on
independent expenditures by political parties, which the principal
opinion expressly distinguished from contribution limits:
"limitations on independent expenditures are less directly related
to preventing corruption" than contributions are,
id., at
615. In that case, the "constitutionally significant fact" that
there was no "coordination between the candidate and the source of
the expenditure" kept the principal opinion "from assuming, absent
convincing evidence to the contrary, that [a limitation on
expenditures] is necessary to combat a substantial danger of
corruption of the
("Buckley identified a single narrow exception to the
rule that limits on political activity were contrary to the First
Amendment. The exception relates to the perception of undue
influence of large contributors to a
candidate"); see also
Federal Election Comm'n v.
National Conservative
Political Action Comm., 470 U. S. 480, 500 (1985)
(observing that
Buckley upheld contribution limits as
constitutional, and noting the Court's "deference to a
congressional determination of the need for a prophylactic rule
where the evil of potential corruption had long been
recognized").
393
electoral system."
Id., at 617-618.
Colorado
Republican thus goes hand in hand with
Buckley, not toe
to toe.
In any event, this case does not present a close call requiring
further definition of whatever the State's evidentiary obligation
may be. While the record does not show that the Missouri
Legislature relied on the evidence and findings accepted in
Buckley,6 the evidence introduced into the record by
petitioners or cited by the lower courts in this action and the
action regarding Proposition A is enough to show that the
substantiation of the congressional concerns reflected in
Buckley has its counterpart supporting the Missouri law.
Although Missouri does not preserve legislative history, 5 F. Supp.
2d, at 738, the State presented an affidavit from State Senator
Wayne Goode, the co-chair of the state legislature's Interim Joint
Committee on Campaign Finance Reform at the time the State enacted
the contribution limits, who stated that large contributions have"
'the real potential to buy votes,'"
ibid.; App. 47. The
District Court cited newspaper accounts of large contributions
supporting inferences of impropriety. 5 F. Supp. 2d, at 738, n. 6.
One report questioned the state treasurer's decision to use a
certain bank for most of Missouri's banking business after that
institution contributed $20,000 to the treasurer's campaign.
Editorial, The Central Issue is Trust, St. Louis PostDispatch, Dec.
31, 1993, p.
6C. Another made much of the receipt by a
candidate for state auditor of a $40,000 contribution from a
brewery and one for $20,000 from a bank. J. Mannies, Auditor Race
May Get Too Noisy to be Ignored, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Sept. 11,
1994, at 4B. In
Carver v.
Nixon, 72 F.3d
633 (1995), the Eighth Circuit itself, while
6 Cf.
Renton v.
Playtime Theatres, Inc., 475 U. S. 41, 51-52 (1986)
("The First Amendment does not require a city, before enacting ...
an ordinance, to conduct new studies or produce evidence
independent of that already generated by other cities, so long as
whatever evidence the city relies upon is reasonably believed to be
relevant to the problem that the city addresses").
394
invalidating the limits Proposition A imposed, identified a
$420,000 contribution to candidates in northern Missouri from a
political action committee linked to an investment bank, and three
scandals, including one in which a state representative was
"accused of sponsoring legislation in exchange for kickbacks," and
another in which Missouri's former attorney general pleaded guilty
to charges of conspiracy to misuse state property,
id., at
642, and n. 10, after being indicted for using a state workers'
compensation fund to benefit campaign contributors. And although
majority votes do not, as such, defeat First Amendment protections,
the statewide vote on Proposition A certainly attested to the
perception relied upon here: "[A]n overwhelming 74 percent of the
voters of Missouri determined that contribution limits are
necessary to combat corruption and the appearance thereof."
Carver v.
Nixon, 882 F. Supp. 901, 905 (WD Mo.),
rev'd, 72
There might, of course, be need for a more extensive evidentiary
documentation if respondents had made any showing of their own to
cast doubt on the apparent implications of
Buck ley's
evidence and the record here, but the closest respondents come to
challenging these conclusions is their invocation of academic
studies said to indicate that large contributions to public
officials or candidates do not actually result in changes in
candidates' positions. Brief for Respondents Shrink Missouri
Government PAC et al. 41; Smith, Money Talks: Speech, Corruption,
Equality, and Campaign Finance, 86 Geo. L. J. 45, 58 (1997); Smith,
Faulty Assumptions and Undemocratic Consequences of Campaign
Finance Reform, 105 Yale L. J. 1049, 1067-1068 (1995). Other
studies, however, point the other way. Reply Brief for Respondent
Bray 4-5; F. Sorauf, Inside Campaign Finance 169 (1992); Hall &
Wayman, Buying Time: Moneyed Interests and the Mobilization of Bias
in Congressional Committees, 84 Am. Pol. Sci. Rev. 797 (1990); D.
Magleby & C. Nelson, The Money Chase 78 (1990). Given the
conflict among these publica-
395
tions, and the absence of any reason to think that public
perception has been influenced by the studies cited by respondents,
there is little reason to doubt that sometimes large contributions
will work actual corruption of our political system, and no reason
to question the existence of a corresponding suspicion among
voters.
c
Nor do we see any support for respondents' various arguments
that in spite of their striking resemblance to the limitations
sustained in
Buckley, those in Missouri are so different in
kind as to raise essentially a new issue about the adequacy of the
Missouri statute's tailoring to serve its purposes.7 Here, as in
Buckley, "[t]here is no indication ... that the contribution
limitations imposed by the [law] would have any dramatic[ally]
adverse effect on the funding of campaigns and political
associations," and thus no showing that
7 Two of respondents'
amici raise the different argument,
that contribution limits are insufficiently narrow, in the light of
disclosure requirements and bribery laws as less restrictive
mechanisms for dealing with
quid pro quo threats and
apprehensions. Brief for Pacific Legal Foundation et al. as
Amici Curiae 23-29. We specifically rejected this notion in
Buckley v.
Valeo, 424 U. S. 1 (1976)
(per
curiam), where we said that antibribery laws "deal with only
the most blatant and specific attempts of those with money to
influence government action," and that "Congress was surely
entitled to conclude that disclosure was only a partial measure,
and that contribution ceilings were a necessary legislative
concomitant to deal with the reality or appearance of corruption
inherent in a system permitting unlimited financial contributions,
even when the identities of the contributors and the amounts of
their contributions are fully disclosed."
Id., at 28. We
understood contribution limits, on the other hand, to "focu[s]
precisely on the problem of large campaign contributions-the narrow
aspect of political association where the actuality and potential
for corruption have been identified-while leaving persons free to
engage in independent political expression, to associate actively
through volunteering their services, and to assist to a limited but
nonetheless substantial extent in supporting candidates and
committees with financial resources."
Ibid. There is no
reason to view contribution limits any differently today.
396
"the limitations prevented candidates and political committees
from amassing the resources necessary for effective advocacy." 424
U. S., at 21. The District Court found here that in the period
since the Missouri limits became effective, "candidates for state
elected office [have been] quite able to raise funds sufficient to
run effective campaigns," 5 F. Supp. 2d, at 740, and that
"candidates for political office in the state are still able to
amass impressive campaign war chests,"
id., at 741.8 The
plausibility of these conclusions is buttressed by petitioners'
evidence that in the 1994 Missouri elections (before any relevant
state limitations went into effect), 97.62 percent of all
contributors to candidates for state auditor made contributions of
$2,000 or less.
Ibid.; App. 34-36.9 Even if we were to
assume that the contribution limits affected respondent Fredman's
ability to wage a competitive campaign (no small assumption given
that Fredman only identified one contributor, Shrink Missouri, that
would have given him more than $1,075 per election), a showing of
one affected individual does not point up a system of suppressed
political advocacy that would be unconstitutional under
Buckley.
These conclusions of the District Court and the supporting
evidence also suffice to answer respondents' variant claim that the
Missouri limits today differ in kind from
Buckley's owing to
inflation since 1976. Respondents seem to assume that
Buckley set a minimum constitutional threshold for
contribution limits, which in dollars adjusted for loss of
purchasing power are now well above the lines drawn by Missouri.
But this assumption is a fundamental misunderstanding of what we
held.
8 This case does not, however, involve any claim that the
Missouri law has restricted access to the ballot in any election
other than that for state auditor.
9 Similarly, data showed that less than 1.5 percent of the
contributors to candidates in the 1992 election for Missouri
secretary of state made aggregate contributions in excess of
$2,000. 5 F. Supp. 2d, at 741; App. 35.
397
In
Buckley, we specifically rejected the contention that
$1,000, or any other amount, was a constitutional minimum below
which legislatures could not regulate. As indicated above, we
referred instead to the outer limits of contribution regulation by
asking whether there was any showing that the limits were so low as
to impede the ability of candidates to "amas[s] the resources
necessary for effective advocacy," 424 U. S., at 21. We asked, in
other words, whether the contribution limitation was so radical in
effect as to render political association ineffective, drive the
sound of a candidate's voice below the level of notice, and render
contributions pointless. Such being the test, the issue in later
cases cannot be truncated to a narrow question about the power of
the dollar, but must go to the power to mount a campaign with all
the dollars likely to be forthcoming. As Judge Gibson put it, the
dictates of the First Amendment are not mere functions of the
Consumer Price Index. 161 F. 3d, at 525 (dissenting opinion).
D
The dissenters in this case think our reasoning evades the real
issue. JUSTICE THOMAS chides us for "hiding behind"
Buckley,
post, at 422, and JUSTICE KENNEDY faults us for seeing this
case as "a routine application of our analysis" in
Buckley
instead of facing up to what he describes as the consequences of
Buckley, post, at 405. Each dissenter would overrule
Buckley and thinks we should do the same.
The answer is that we are supposed to decide this case.
Shrink and Fredman did not request that
Buckley be
overruled; the furthest reach of their arguments about the law was
that subsequent decisions already on the books had enhanced the
State's burden of justification beyond what
Buckley
required, a proposition we have rejected as mistaken.
III
There is no reason in logic or evidence to doubt the sufficiency
of
Buckley to govern this case in support of the Mis-
398
souri statute. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is,
accordingly, reversed, and the case is remanded for proceedings
consistent with this opinion.
It is so ordered.
JUSTICE STEVENS, concurring.
JUSTICE KENNEDY suggests that the misuse of soft money tolerated
by this Court's misguided decision in
Colorado Republican
Federal Campaign Comm. v.
Federal Election Comm'n,
518 U. S. 604
(1996), demonstrates the need for a fresh examination of the
constitutional issues raised by Congress' enactment of the Federal
Election Campaign Acts of 1971 and 1974 and this Court's resolution
of those issues in
Buckley v.
Valeo, 424 U. S. 1 (1976)
(per
curiam). In response to his call for a new beginning,
therefore, I make one simple point. Money is property; it is not
speech.
Speech has the power to inspire volunteers to perform a
multitude of tasks on a campaign trail, on a battleground, or even
on a football field. Money, meanwhile, has the power to pay hired
laborers to perform the same tasks. It does not follow, however,
that the First Amendment provides the same measure of protection to
the use of money to accomplish such goals as it provides to the use
of ideas to achieve the same results. *
Our Constitution and our heritage properly protect the
individual's interest in making decisions about the use of his or
her own property. Governmental regulation of such decisions can
sometimes be viewed either as "deprivations of lib-
*Unless, of course, the prohibition entirely forecloses a
channel of communication, such as the use of paid petition
circulators. See,
e. g., Meyer v.
Grant, 486 U.
S. 414, 424 (1988) ("Colorado's prohibition of paid petition
circulators restricts access to the most effective, fundamental,
and perhaps economical avenue of political discourse, direct
one-on-one communication .... The First Amendment protects
appellees' right not only to advocate their cause but also to
select what they believe to be the most effective means for so
doing").
399
erty" or as "deprivations of property," see,
e.
g., Moore v.
East Cleveland, 431 U. S. 494, 513 (1977)
(STEVENS, J., concurring in judgment). Telling a grandmother that
she may not use her own property to provide shelter to a
grandchild-or to hire mercenaries to work in that grandchild's
campaign for public office-raises important constitutional concerns
that are unrelated to the First Amendment. Because I did not
participate in the Court's decision in
Buckley, I did not
have the opportunity to suggest then that those property and
liberty concerns adequately explain the Court's decision to
invalidate the expenditure limitations in the 1974 Act.
Reliance on the First Amendment to justify the invalidation of
campaign finance regulations is the functional equivalent of the
Court's candid reliance on the doctrine of substantive due process
as articulated in the two prevailing opinions in
Moore v.
East Cleveland. The right to use one's own money to hire
gladiators, or to fund "speech by proxy," certainly merits
significant constitutional protection. These property rights,
however, are not entitled to the same protection as the right to
say what one pleases.
JUSTICE BREYER, with whom JUSTICE GINSBURG joins,
concurring.
The dissenters accuse the Court of weakening the First
Amendment. They believe that failing to adopt a "strict scrutiny"
standard "balance[s] away First Amendment freedoms."
Post,
at 410 (opinion of THOMAS, J.). But the principal dissent
oversimplifies the problem faced in the campaign finance context.
It takes a difficult constitutional problem and turns it into a
lopsided dispute between political expression and government
censorship. Under the cover of this fiction and its accompanying
formula, the dissent would make the Court absolute arbiter of a
difficult question best left, in the main, to the political
branches. I write sepa-
400
rately to address the critical question of how the Court ought
to review this kind of problem, and to explain why I believe the
Court's choice here is correct.
If the dissent believes that the Court diminishes the importance
of the First Amendment interests before us, it is wrong. The
Court's opinion does not question the constitutional importance of
political speech or that its protection lies at the heart of the
First Amendment. Nor does it question the need for particularly
careful, precise, and independent judicial review where, as here,
that protection is at issue. But this is a case where
constitutionally protected interests lie on both sides of the legal
equation. For that reason there is no place for a strong
presumption against constitutionality, of the sort often thought to
accompany the words "strict scrutiny." Nor can we expect that
mechanical application of the tests associated with "strict
scrutiny" -the tests of "compelling interests" and "least
restrictive means"-will properly resolve the difficult
constitutional problem that campaign finance statutes pose. Cf.
Kovacs v.
Cooper, 336 U. S. 77, 96 (1949)
(Frankfurter, J., concurring) (objecting, in the First Amendment
context, to "oversimplified formulas"); see also
Eu v.
San Francisco County Democratic Central Comm., 489 U. S. 214, 233-234
(1989) (STEVENS, J., concurring);
Illinois Bd. of Elections
v.
Socialist Workers Party, 440 U. S. 173, 188-189
(1979) (Blackmun, J., concurring) (same).
On the one hand, a decision to contribute money to a campaign is
a matter of First Amendment concern-not because money
is
speech (it is not); but because it
enables speech. Through
contributions the contributor associates himself with the
candidate's cause, helps the candidate communicate a political
message with which the contributor agrees, and helps the candidate
win by attracting the votes of similarly minded voters.
Buckley v.
Valeo, 424 U. S. 1, 24-25 (1976)
(per curiam). Both political association and political
communication are at stake.
401
On the other hand, restrictions upon the amount anyone
individual can contribute to a particular candidate seek to protect
the integrity of the electoral process-the means through which a
free society democratically translates political speech into
concrete governmental action. See
id., at
26-27;
Burroughs v.
United States, 290 U. S. 534, 545 (1934)
(upholding 1925 Federal Corrupt Practices Act by emphasizing
constitutional importance of safeguarding the electoral process);
see also
Burson v.
Freeman, 504 U. S. 191, 199 (1992)
(plurality opinion) (recognizing compelling interest in preserving
integrity of electoral process). Moreover, by limiting the size of
the largest contributions, such restrictions aim to democratize the
influence that money itself may bring to bear upon the electoral
process. Cf.
Reynolds v.
Sims, 377 U. S. 533, 565 (1964)
(in the context of apportionment, the Constitution "demands" that
each citizen have "an equally effective voice"). In doing so, they
seek to build public confidence in that process and broaden the
base of a candidate's meaningful financial support, encouraging the
public participation and open discussion that the First Amendment
itself presupposes. See
Mills v.
Alabama, 384 U. S.
214, 218-219 (1966);
Whitney v.
California, 274 U. S. 357, 375-376
(1927) (Brandeis, J., concurring); A. Meiklejohn, Free Speech and
Its Relation to Self-Government 24-27 (1948).
In service of these objectives, the statute imposes restrictions
of degree. It does not deny the contributor the opportunity to
associate with the candidate through a contribution, though it
limits a contribution's size. Nor does it prevent the contributor
from using money (alone or with others) to pay for the expression
of the same views in other ways. Instead, it permits all supporters
to contribute the same amount of money, in an attempt to make the
process fairer and more democratic.
Under these circumstances, a presumption against
constitutionality is out of place. I recognize that
Buckley
used
402
language that could be interpreted to the contrary. It said, for
example, that it rejected "the concept that government may restrict
the speech of some elements of our society in order to enhance the
relative voice of others." 424 U. S., at 48-49. But those words
cannot be taken literally. The Constitution often permits
restrictions on the speech of some in order to prevent a few from
drowning out the manyin Congress, for example, where
constitutionally protected debate, Art. I, § 6, is limited to
provide every Member an equal opportunity to express his or her
views. Or in elections, where the Constitution tolerates numerous
restrictions on ballot access, limiting the political rights of
some so as to make effective the political rights of the entire
electorate. See,
e. g., Storer v.
Brown, 415 U.
S. 724, 736 (1974). Regardless, as the result in
Buckley
made clear, the statement does not automatically invalidate a
statute that seeks a fairer electoral debate through contribution
limits, nor should it forbid the Court to take account of the
competing constitutional interests just mentioned.
In such circumstances-where a law significantly implicates
competing constitutionally protected interests in complex ways-the
Court has closely scrutinized the statute's impact on those
interests, but refrained from employing a simple test that
effectively presumes unconstitutionality. Rather, it has balanced
interests. And in practice that has meant asking whether the
statute burdens anyone such interest in a manner out of proportion
to the statute's salutary effects upon the others (perhaps, but not
necessarily, because of the existence of a clearly superior, less
restrictive alternative). Where a legislature has significantly
greater institutional expertise, as, for example, in the field of
election regulation, the Court in practice defers to empirical
legislative judgments-at least where that deference does not risk
such constitutional evils as, say, permitting incumbents to
insulate themselves from effective electoral challenge. This
approach is that taken in fact by
Buckley for contributions,
and
403
is found generally where competing constitutional interests are
implicated, such as privacy, see,
e. g., Frisby v.
Schultz, 487
U. S. 474, 485-488 (1988) (balancing rights of privacy and
expression);
Rowan v.
Post Office Dept., 397 U. S. 728, 736 (1970)
(same), First Amendment interests of listeners or viewers, see,
e. g., Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. v.
FCC,
520 U. S. 180,
192-194 (1997) (recognizing the speech interests of both viewers
and cable operators);
Columbia Broadcasting System, Inc. v.
Democratic National Committee, 412 U. S. 94, 102-103
(1973) ("Balancing the various First Amendment interests involved
in the broadcast media ... is a task of a great delicacy and
difficulty");
Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v.
FCC,
395 U. S. 367,
389-390 (1969) (First Amendment permits the Federal Communications
Commission to restrict the speech of some to enable the speech of
others), and the integrity of the electoral process, see,
e.
g., Burson, supra, at 198-211 (weighing First
Amendment rights against electoral integrity necessary for right to
vote);
Anderson v.
Celebrezze, 460 U. S. 780, 788-790
(1983) (same);
Storer v.
Brown, supra, at 730
("[T]here must be a substantial regulation of elections if they are
to be fair and honest"). The approach taken by these cases is
consistent with that of other constitutional courts facing
similarly complex constitutional problems. See,
e. g.,
Bowman v.
United Kingdom, 26 Eur. Ct. H. R. 1 (European
Comm'n of Human Rights 1998) (demanding proportionality in the
campaign finance context);
Libman v.
Quebec (Attorney
General), 151 D. L. R. (4th) 385 (Canada 1997) (same). For the
dissenters to call the approach
"sui generis," post, at 410
(opinion of THOMAS, J.), overstates their case.
Applying this approach to the present case, I would uphold the
statute essentially for the reasons stated by the Court. I agree
that the legislature understands the problem-the threat to
electoral integrity, the need for democratizationbetter than do we.
We should defer to its political judgment that unlimited spending
threatens the integrity of the
404
electoral process. But we should not defer in respect to whether
its solution, by imposing too low a contribution limit,
significantly increases the reputation-related or media-related
advantages of incumbency and thereby insulates legislators from
effective electoral challenge. The statutory limit here, $1,075 (or
378, 1976 dollars), is low enough to raise such a question. But
given the empirical information presented-the type of election at
issue; the record of adequate candidate financing postreform; and
the fact that the statute indexes the amount for inflation-I agree
with the Court that the statute does not work disproportionate
harm. The limit may have prevented the plaintiff, Zev David
Fredman, from financing his own campaign for office, for Fredman's
support among potential contributors was not sufficiently
widespread. But any contribution statute (like any statute setting
ballot eligibility requirements, see,
e. g.,
Jenness v.
Fortson, 403 U. S. 431, 442
(1971)) will narrow the field of conceivable challengers to some
degree. Undue insulation is a practical matter, and it cannot be
inferred automatically from the fact that the limit makes ballot
access more difficult for one previously unsuccessful
candidate.
The approach I have outlined here is consistent with the
approach this Court has taken in many complex First Amendment
cases. See
supra, at 402-403. The
Buckley decision,
as well, might be interpreted as embodying sufficient flexibility
for the problem at hand. After all,
Buckley's holding seems
to leave the political branches broad authority to enact laws
regulating contributions that take the form of "soft money." It
held public financing laws constitutional, 424 U. S., at 57, n. 65,
85-109. It says nothing one way or the other about such important
proposed reforms as reduced-price media time. And later cases
presuppose that the Federal Election Commission has the delegated
authority to interpret broad statutory provisions in light of the
campaign finance law's basic purposes, despite disagreements over
whether the Commission has exercised that au-
405
thority in a particular case. See
Colorado Republican Federal
Campaign Comm. v.
Federal Election Comm'n, 518 U. S.
604, 619-621 (1996) (whether claimed "independent expenditure" is a
"coordinated expenditure"); accord,
id., at 648-650
(STEVENS, J., dissenting). Alternatively, it might prove possible
to reinterpret aspects of
Buckley in light of the
post-Buckley experience stressed by JUSTICE KENNEDY,
post, at 406-409 (dissenting opinion), making less absolute
the contribution/expenditure line, particularly in respect to
independently wealthy candidates, whose expenditures might be
considered contributions to their own campaigns.
But what if I am wrong about
Buckley? Suppose
Buckley denies the political branches sufficient leeway to
enact comprehensive solutions to the problems posed by campaign
finance. If so, like JUSTICE KENNEDY, I believe the Constitution
would require us to reconsider
Buckley. With that
understanding I join the Court's opinion.
JUSTICE KENNEDY, dissenting.
The Court's decision has lasting consequences for political
speech in the course of elections, the speech upon which democracy
depends. Yet in defining the controlling standard of review and
applying it to the urgent claim presented, the Court seems almost
indifferent. Its analysis would not be acceptable for the routine
case of a single protester with a hand-scrawled sign, see
City
of Ladue v.
Gilleo, 512 U. S. 43 (1994), a few
demonstrators on a public sidewalk, see
United States v.
Grace, 461 U.
S. 171 (1983), or a driver who taped over the motto on his
license plate because he disagreed with its message, see
Wooley v.
Maynard, 430 U. S. 705 (1977).
Surely the Court's approach is unacceptable for a case announcing a
rule that suppresses one of our most essential and prevalent forms
of political speech.
It would be no answer to say that this is a routine application
of our analysis in
Buckley v.
Valeo, 424 U. S. 1 (1976)
(per
curiam), to a similar set of facts, so that a cavalier dis-
406
missal of respondents' claim is appropriate. The justifications
for the case system and
stare decisis must rest upon the
Court's capacity, and responsibility, to acknowledge its missteps.
It is our duty to face up to adverse, unintended consequences
flowing from our own prior decisions. With all respect, I submit
the Court does not accept this obligation in the case before us.
Instead, it perpetuates and compounds a serious distortion of the
First Amendment resulting from our own intervention in
Buckley. The Court is concerned about voter suspicion of the
role of money in politics. Amidst an atmosphere of skepticism,
however, it hardly inspires confidence for the Court to abandon the
rigors of our traditional First Amendment structure.
I
Zev David Fredman asks us to evaluate his speech claim in the
context of a system which favors candidates and officeholders whose
campaigns are supported by soft money, usually funneled through
political parties. The Court pays him no heed. The plain fact is
that the compromise the Court invented in
Buckley set the
stage for a new kind of speech to enter the political system. It is
covert speech. The Court has forced a substantial amount of
political speech underground, as contributors and candidates devise
ever more elaborate methods of avoiding contribution limits, limits
which take no account of rising campaign costs. The preferred
method has been to conceal the real purpose of the speech. Soft
money may be contributed to political parties in unlimited amounts,
see
Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Comm. v.
Federal
Election Comm'n, 518 U. S. 604, 616
(1996), and is used often to fund so-called issue advocacy,
advertisements that promote or attack a candidate's positions
without specifically urging his or her election or defeat.
Briffault, Issue Advocacy: Redrawing the Elections/ Politics Line,
77 Texas L. Rev. 1751, 1752-1753 (1999). Issue advocacy, like soft
money, is unrestricted, see
Buckley,
407
supra, at 42-44, while straightforward speech in the form
of financial contributions paid to a candidate, speech subject to
full disclosure and prompt evaluation by the public, is not. Thus
has the Court's decision given us covert speech. This mocks the
First Amendment. The current system would be unfortunate, and
suspect under the First Amendment, had it evolved from a deliberate
legislative choice; but its unhappy origins are in our earlier
decree in
Buckley, which by accepting half of what Congress
did (limiting contributions) but rejecting the other (limiting
expenditures) created a misshapen system, one which distorts the
meaning of speech.
The irony that we would impose this regime in the name of free
speech ought to be sufficient ground to reject
Buckley's
wooden formula in the present case. The wrong goes deeper, however.
By operation of the
Buckley rule, a candidate cannot oppose
this system in an effective way without selling out to it first.
Soft money must be raised to attack the problem of soft money. In
effect, the Court immunizes its own erroneous ruling from change.
Rulings of this Court must never be viewed with more caution than
when they provide immunity from their own correction in the
political process and in the forum of unrestrained speech. The
melancholy history of campaign finance in
Buck ley's wake
shows what can happen when we intervene in the dynamics of speech
and expression by inventing an artificial scheme of our own.
The case in one sense might seem unimportant. It appears that
Mr. Fredman was an outsider candidate who may not have had much of
a chance. Yet, by binding him to the outdated limit of $1,075 per
contribution in a system where parties can raise soft money without
limitation and a powerful press faces no restrictions on use of its
own resources to back its preferred candidates, the Court tells Mr.
Fredman he cannot challenge the status quo unless he first gives
into it. This is not the First Amendment with which I am
familiar.
408
To defend its extension of
Buckley to present times, the
Court, of course, recites the dangers of corruption, or the
appearance of corruption, when an interested person contributes
money to a candidate. What the Court does not do is examine and
defend the substitute it has encouraged, covert speech funded by
unlimited soft money. In my view that system creates dangers
greater than the one it has replaced. The first danger is the one
already mentioned: that we require contributors of soft money and
its beneficiaries to mask their real purpose. Second, we have an
indirect system of accountability that is confusing, if not
dispiriting, to the voter. The very disaffection or distrust that
the Court cites as the justification for limits on direct
contributions has now spread to the entire political discourse.
Buckley has not worked.
My colleagues in the majority, in my respectful submission, do
much disservice to our First Amendment jurisprudence by failing to
acknowledge or evaluate the whole operation of the system that we
ourselves created in
Buckley. Our First Amendment principles
surely tell us that an interest thought to be the compelling reason
for enacting a law is cast into grave doubt when a worse evil
surfaces in the law's actual operation. And our obligation to
examine the operation of the law is all the more urgent when the
new evil is itself a distortion of speech. By these measures the
law before us cannot pass any serious standard of First Amendment
review.
Among the facts the Court declines to take into account is the
emergence of cyberspace communication by which political
contributions can be reported almost simultaneously with payment.
The public can then judge for itself whether the candidate or the
officeholder has so overstepped that we no longer trust him or her
to make a detached and neutral judgment. This is a far more
immediate way to assess the integrity and the performance of our
leaders than through the hidden world of soft money and covert
speech.
409
Officeholders face a dilemma inherent in the democratic process
and one that has never been easy to resolve: how to exercise their
best judgment while soliciting the continued support and loyalty of
constituents whose interests may not always coincide with that
judgment. Edmund Burke captured the tension in his Speeches at
Bristol. "Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but
his judgment; and he betrays instead of serving you, if he
sacrifices it to your opinion." E. Burke, Speeches of the Right
Hon. Edmund Burke 130 (J. Burke ed. 1867). Whether our
officeholders can discharge their duties in a proper way when they
are beholden to certain interests both for reelection and for
campaign support is, I should think, of constant concern not alone
to citizens but to conscientious officeholders themselves. There
are no easy answers, but the Constitution relies on one: open,
robust, honest, unfettered speech that the voters can examine and
assess in an ever-changing and more complex environment.
II
To this point my view may seem to be but a reflection of what
JUSTICE THOMAS has written, and to a large extent I agree with his
insightful and careful discussion of our precedents. If an ensuing
chapter must be written, I may well come out as he does, for his
reasoning and my own seem to point to the conclusion that the
legislature can do little by way of imposing limits on political
speech of this sort. For now, however, I would leave open the
possibility that Congress, or a state legislature, might devise a
system in which there are some limits on both expenditures and
contributions, thus permitting officeholders to concentrate their
time and efforts on official duties rather than on fundraising. For
the reasons I have sought to express, there are serious
constitutional questions to be confronted in enacting any such
scheme, but I would not foreclose it at the outset. I would
overrule
Buckley and then free Congress or state
legislatures to attempt some new reform, if, based upon their
own
410
considered view of the First Amendment, it is possible to do so.
Until any reexamination takes place, however, the existing
distortion of speech caused by the halfway house we created in
Buckley ought to be eliminated. The First Amendment ought to
be allowed to take its own course without further obstruction from
the artificial system we have imposed. It suffices here to say that
the law in question does not come even close to passing any serious
scrutiny.
For these reasons, though I am in substantial agreement with
what JUSTICE THOMAS says in his opinion, I have thought it
necessary to file a separate dissent.
JUSTICE THOMAS, with whom JUSTICE SCALIA joins, dissenting.
In the process of ratifying Missouri's sweeping repression of
political speech, the Court today adopts the analytic fallacies of
our flawed decision in
Buckley v.
Valeo, 424 U. S. 1 (1976)
(per curiam). Unfortunately, the Court is not content to
merely adhere to erroneous precedent. Under the guise of applying
Buckley, the Court proceeds to weaken the already enfeebled
constitutional protection that
Buckley afforded campaign
contributions. In the end, the Court employs a
sui generis
test to balance away First Amendment freedoms.
Because the Court errs with each step it takes, I dissent.
As I indicated in
Colorado Republican Federal Campaign
Comm. v.
Federal Election Comm'n, 518 U. S. 604, 635-644
(1996) (opinion concurring in judgment and dissenting in part), our
decision in
Buckley was in error, and I would overrule it. I
would subject campaign contribution limitations to strict scrutiny,
under which Missouri's contribution limits are patently
unconstitutional.
I
I begin with a proposition that ought to be unassailable:
Political speech is the primary object of First Amendment
411
protection. See,
e. g., Mills v.
Alabama, 384 U. S. 214, 218
(1966); Whitney v.
California, 274 U. S. 357, 375 (1927)
(Brandeis, J., concurring); T. Cooley, Constitutional Limitations
*422; Z. Chafee, Free Speech in the United States 28 (1954); Bork,
Neutral Principles and Some First Amendment Problems, 47 Ind. L. J.
1, 20 (1971); Sun stein, Free Speech Now, in The Bill of Rights in
the Modern State 304-307 (G. Stone, R. Epstein, & C. Sunstein
eds. 1992). The Founders sought to protect the rights of
individuals to engage in political speech because a self-governing
people depends upon the free exchange of political information. And
that free exchange should receive the most protection when it
matters the most-during campaigns for elective office. "The value
and efficacy of [the right to elect the members of government]
depends on the knowledge of the comparative merits and demerits of
the candidates for public trust, and on the equal freedom,
consequently, of examining and discussing these merits and demerits
of the candidates respectively." Madison, Report on the Resolutions
(1799), in 6 Writings of James Madison 397 (G. Hunt ed. 1906).
I do not start with these foundational principles because the
Court openly disagrees with them-it could not, for they are solidly
embedded in our precedents. See,
e. g., Eu v.
San Francisco County Democratic Central Comm., 489 U. S. 214,223 (1989)
("[T]he First Amendment 'has its fullest and most urgent
application' to speech uttered during a campaign for political
office" (quoting
Monitor Patriot Co. v.
Roy, 401 U. S. 265, 272
(1971)));
Brown v.
Hartlage, 456 U. S. 45, 53 (1982)
("The free exchange of ideas provides special vitality to the
process traditionally at the heart of American constitutional
democracy-the political campaign");
Garrison v.
Louisiana, 379
U. S. 64, 74-75 (1964) ("[S]peech concerning public affairs is
... the essence of self-government"). Instead, I start with them
because the Court today abandons them. For nearly half a century,
this Court has extended First Amendment protection to a multitude
of forms of
412
"speech," such as making false defamatory statements, filing
lawsuits, dancing nude, exhibiting drive-in movies with nudity,
burning flags, and wearing military uniforms.1 Not surprisingly,
the Courts of Appeals have followed our lead and concluded that the
First Amendment protects, for example, begging, shouting
obscenities, erecting tables on a sidewalk, and refusing to wear a
necktie.2 In light of the many cases of this sort, today's decision
is a most curious anomaly. Whatever the proper status of such
activities under the First Amendment, I am confident that they are
less integral to the functioning of our Republic than campaign
contributions. Yet the majority today, rather than going out of its
way to
protect political speech, goes out of its way to
avoid protecting it. As I explain below, contributions to
political campaigns generate essential political speech. And
contribution caps, which place a direct and substantial limit on
core speech, should be met with the utmost skepticism and should
receive the strictest scrutiny.
II
At bottom, the majority's refusal to apply strict scrutiny to
contribution limits rests upon
Buckley's discounting of the
First Amendment interests at stake. The analytic foundation of
Buckley, however, was tenuous from the very beginning and
has only continued to erode in the intervening years. What remains
of
Buckley fails to provide an adequate justification for
limiting individual contributions to political candidates.
1
New York Times Co. v.
Sullivan, 376 U. S. 254 (1964);
NAACP v.
Button, 371 U. S. 415 (1963);
Barnes v.
Glen Theatre, Inc., 501 U. S. 560 (1991)
(plurality opinion);
Erznoznik v.
Jacksonville,
422 U. S. 205
(1975);
United States v.
Eichman, 496 U. S. 310 (1990);
Schacht v.
United States, 398 U. S. 58 (1970).
2 Loper v. New York City Police Dept.,
999
F.2d 699 (CA2 1993); Sandul v. Larion,
119
F.3d 1250 (CA6 1997); One World One Family Now v. Miami Beach,
175 F.3d
1282 (CAll 1999); East Hartford Education Assoc. v. Board of
Ed. of East Hartford,
562 F.2d
838 (CA2 1977).
413
A
To justify its decision upholding contribution limitations while
striking down expenditure limitations, the Court in
Buckley
explained that expenditure limits "represent substantial rather
than merely theoretical restraints on the quantity and diversity of
political speech," 424 U. S., at 19, while contribution limits
"entai[l] only a marginal restriction upon the contributor's
ability to engage in free communication,"
id., at 20-21
(quoted
ante, at 386). In drawing this distinction, the
Court in
Buckley relied on the premise that contributing to
a candidate differs qualitatively from directly spending money. It
noted that "[w]hile contributions may result in political
expression if spent by a candidate or an association to present
views to the voters, the transformation of contributions into
political debate involves speech by someone other than the
contributor." 424 U. S., at 21. See also
California Medical
Assn. v.
Federal Election Comm'n, 453 U. S. 182, 196 (1981)
(plurality opinion) ("[T]he 'speech by proxy' that [a contributor]
seeks to achieve through its contributions ... is not the sort of
political advocacy that this Court in
Buckley found entitled
to full First Amendment protection").
But this was a faulty distinction
ab initio because it
ig-
nored the reality of how speech of all kinds is
disseminated:
"Even in the case of a direct expenditure, there is usually some
go-between that facilitates the dissemination of the spender's
message-for instance, an advertising agency or a television
station. To call a contribution 'speech by proxy' thus does little
to differentiate it from an expenditure. The only possible
difference is that contributions involve an extra step in the proxy
chain. But again, that is a difference in form, not substance."
Colorado Republican, 518 U. S., at 638-639 (THOMAS, J.,
concurring in judgment and dissenting in part) (citations
omitted).
414
And, inasmuch as the speech-by-proxy argument was disconnected
from the realities of political speech to begin with, it is not
surprising that we have firmly rejected it since
Buckley. In
Federal Election Comm'n v.
National Conservative
Political Action Comm., 470 U. S. 480 (1985), we
cast aside the argument that a contribution does not represent the
constitutionally protected speech of a contributor, recognizing
"that the contributors obviously like the message they are hearing
from these organizations and want to add their voices to that
message; otherwise they would not part with their money."
Id., at 495. Though in that case we considered limitations
on expenditures made by associations, our holding that the
speech-by-proxy argument fails to diminish contributors' First
Amendment rights is directly applicable to this case. In both
cases, donors seek to disseminate information by giving to an
organization controlled by others. Through contributing, citizens
see to it that their views on policy and politics are articulated.
In short, "they are aware that however great the confidence they
may justly feel in their own good sense, their interests can be
more effectually promoted by [another] than by themselves." The
Federalist No. 35, p. 214
(C. Rossiter ed. 1961) (A.
Hamilton).
Without the assistance of the speech-by-proxy argument, the
remainder of
Buckley's rationales founder. Those
rationales-that the "quantity of communication by the contributor
does not increase perceptibly with the size of his contribution,"
Buckley v.
Valeo, supra, at 21 (quoted
ante,
at 386), that "the size of the contribution provides a very rough
index of the intensity of the contributor's support for the
candidate," 424 U. S., at 21 (quoted
ante, at 386), and that
"[a] contribution serves as a general expression of support for the
candidate and his views, but does not communicate the underlying
basis for the support," 424 U. S., at 21 (quoted
ante, at
386)-still rest on the proposition that speech by proxy is not
fully protected. These contentions simply ig-
415
nore that a contribution, by amplifying the voice of the
candidate, helps to ensure the dissemination of the messages that
the contributor wishes to convey. Absent the ability to rest on the
denigration of contributions as mere "proxy speech," the arguments
fall apart.3
The decision of individuals to speak through contributions
rather than through independent expenditures is entirely
reasonable.4 Political campaigns are largely candidate fo-
3 If one were to accept the speech-by-proxy point and consider a
contribution a mere symbolic gesture,
Buckley's auxiliary
arguments still falter. The claim that a large contribution
receives less protection because it only expresses the "intensity
of the contributor's support for the candidate,"
Buckley v.
Valeo, 424 U. S.
1, 21 (1976)
(per curiam) (quoted
ante, at 386),
fails under our jurisprudence because we have accorded full First
Amendment protection to expressions of intensity. See
Cohen
v.
California, 403 U. S. 15, 25-26 (1971) (protecting the
use of an obscenity to stress a point). Equally unavailing is the
claim that a contribution warrants less protection because it "does
not communicate the underlying basis for the support."
Buckley v.
Valeo, supra, at 21 (quoted
ante,
at 386). We regularly hold that speech is protected when the
underlying basis for a position is not given. See,
e. g., City
of Ladue v.
Gilleo, 512 U. S. 43, 46 (1994)
(sign reading "For Peace in the Gulf");
Tinker v.
Des
Moines Independent Community School Dist., 393 U. S. 503, 510-511
(1969) (black armband signifying opposition to Vietnam war). See
also
Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Comm. v.
Federal Election Comm'n, 518 U. S. 604, 640 (1996)
(THOMAS, J., concurring in judgment and dissenting in part) ("Even
a pure message of support, unadorned with reasons, is valuable to
the democratic process"). Cf.
Hurley v.
Irish-American
Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Group of Boston, Inc., 515 U. S. 557, 569 (1995)
(opinion of the Court by SOUTER, J.) ("[A] narrow, succinctly
articulable message is not a condition of constitutional
protection").
4JUSTICE STEVENS asserts that "[m]oney is property; it is not
speech,"
ante, at 398 (concurring opinion), and contends
that there is no First Amendment right "to hire mercenaries" and
"to hire gladiators,"
ante, at 399. These propositions are
directly contradicted by many of our precedents. For example, in
Meyer v.
Grant, 486 U. S. 414 (1988)
(opinion of the Court by STEVENS, J.), this Court confronted a
state ban on payments to petition circulators. The District Court
upheld the law, finding that the ban on monetary payments did not
restrain expression and that the
416
cused and candidate driven. Citizens recognize that the best
advocate for a candidate (and the policy positions he supports)
tends to be the candidate himself. And candidate organizations also
offer other advantages to citizens wishing to partake in political
expression. Campaign organizations offer a ready-built, convenient
means of communicating for donors wishing to support and amplify
political messages. Furthermore, the leader of the organization-the
candidate-has a strong self-interest in efficiently expending funds
in a manner that maximizes the power of the messages the
contributor seeks to disseminate. Individual citizens
understandably realize that they "may add more to political
would-be payors remained free to use their money in other ways.
Id., at 418. We disagreed and held that "[t]he refusal to
permit appellees to pay petition circulators restricts political
expression" by "limit[ing] the number of voices who will convey
appellees' message and the hours they can speak and, therefore,
limits the size of the audience they can reach."
Id., at
422-423. In short, the Court held that the First Amendment protects
the right to pay others to help get a message out. In other cases,
this Court extended such protection, holding that the First
Amendment prohibits laws that do not ban, but instead only
regulate, the terms upon which so-called mercenaries and gladiators
are retained. See
Riley v.
National Federation of Blind
of N. C., Inc., 487 U. S. 781 (1988)
(holding that the First Amendment prohibits state restriction on
the amount a charity may pay a professional fundraiser);
Secretary of State of Md. v.
Joseph H. Munson Co.,
467 U. S. 947
(1984) (same). Cf. also,
e. g., Teachers v.
Hudson,
475 U. S. 292
(1986) (opinion of the Court by STEVENS, J.) (holding that the
First Amendment restrains government-compelled exactions of money);
Abood v.
Detroit Bd. of Ed., 431 U. S. 209 (1977)
(same). In these cases, the Court did not resort to JUSTICE
STEVENS' assertion that money "is not speech" to dismiss challenges
to monetary regulations. Instead, the Court properly examined the
impact of the regulations on free expression. See also,
e. g.,
Federal Election Comm'n v.
National Conservative Political
Action Comm., 470
U. S. 480 (1985) (First Amendment protects political
committee's expenditures of money);
Citizens Against Rent
Control/Coalition for Fair Housing v.
Berkeley, 454 U. S. 290 (1981)
(First Amendment protects monetary contributions to political
committee);
First Nat. Bank of Boston v.
Bellotti,
435 U. S. 765,
769 (1978) (First Amendment protects "spend[ing] money to publicize
[political] views").
417
discourse by giving rather than spending, if the donee is able
to put the funds to more productive use than can the individual."
Colorado Republican, 518 U. S., at 636 (THOMAS, J.,
concurring in judgment and dissenting in part). See also
Federal
Election Comm'n v.
Massachusetts Citizens for Life,
Inc., 479 U. S.
238, 261 (1986) ("[I]ndividuals contribute to a political
organization in part because they regard such a contribution as a
more effective means of advocacy than spending the money under
their own personal direction").5
In the end,
Buckley's claim that contribution limits
"d[o] not in any way infringe the contributor's freedom to discuss
candidates and issues," 424 U. S., at 21 (quoted
ante, at
387), ignores the distinct role of candidate organizations as a
means of individual participation in the Nation's civic dialogue.6
The result is simply the suppression of political
5 Even if contributions to a candidate were not the most
effective means of speaking-and contribution caps left political
speech "significantly unimpaired,"
ante, at 387-an
individual's choice of that mode of expression would still be
protected. "The First Amendment protects [individuals'] right not
only to advocate their cause but also to select what they believe
to be the most effective means for so doing."
Meyer, supra,
at 424 (opinion of the Court by STEVENS, J.). See also
Glickman v.
Wileman Brothers &
Elliott,
Inc., 521 U. S.
457, 488 (1997) (SOUTER, J., dissenting) (noting a "First
Amendment interest in touting [one's] wares as he sees fit").
6 Buckley's approach to associational freedom is also
unsound. In defense of its decision, the Court in
Buckley
explained that contribution limits "leave the contributor free to
become a member of any political association and to assist
personally in the association's efforts on behalf of candidates."
424 U. S., at 22 (quoted
ante, at 387). In essence, the
Court accepted contribution limits because alternative channels of
association remained open. This justification, however, is peculiar
because we have rejected the notion that a law will pass First
Amendment muster simply because it leaves open other opportunities.
Spence v.
Washington, 418 U. S. 405, 411, n. 4 (1974)
(per curiam) (Although a prohibition's effect may be
"'minuscule and trifling,'" a person" 'is not to have the exercise
of his liberty of expression in appropriate places abridged on the
plea that it may be exercised in some other place'" (quoting
Schneider v.
State (Town of Irvington), 308 U. S. 147, 163
(1939))). See also,
e. g., Texas v.
Johnson, 491 U. S. 397,416, n. 11
(1989);
Kusper v.
Pontikes, 414 U. S. 51,
418
speech. By depriving donors of their right to speak through the
candidate, contribution limits relegate donors' points of view to
less effective modes of communication. Additionally, limiting
contributions curtails individual participation. "Even for the
affluent, the added costs in money or time of taking out a
newspaper advertisement, handing out leaflets on the street, or
standing in front of one's house with a hand-held sign may make the
difference between participating and not participating in some
public debate."
City of Ladue v.
Gilleo, 512 U. S. 43, 57 (1994)
(opinion of the Court by STEVENS, J.).
Buckley completely
failed in its attempt to provide a basis for permitting government
to secondguess the individual choices of citizens partaking in
quintessentially democratic activities. "The First Amendment
mandates that we presume that speakers, not the government, know
best both what they want to say and how to say it."
Riley v.
National Federation of Blind of N. c.,
Inc., 487 U. S. 781, 790-791
(1988).
B
The Court in
Buckley denigrated the speech interests not
only of contributors, but also of candidates. Although the Court
purported to be concerned about the plight of candidates, it
nevertheless proceeded to disregard their interests without
justification. The Court did not even attempt to claim that
contribution limits do not suppress the speech of political
candidates. See 424 U. S., at 18 ("[C]ontribution ... limitations
impose direct quantity restrictions on political communication and
association by ... candidates");
id., at 33 ("[T]he
[contribution] limitations may have a significant effect on
particular challengers or incumbents"). It could not have, given
the reality that donations "mak[e] a significant contribution to
freedom of expression by enhancing the
58 (1973). "For even when pursuing a legitimate interest, a
State may not choose means that unnecessarily restrict
constitutionally protected liberty."
Id., at 58-59.
419
ability of candidates to present, and the public to receive,
information necessary for the effective operation of the democratic
process."
CBS, Inc. v.
FCC, 453 U. S. 367, 396
(1981). See also
Citizens Against Rent Control/Coalition for
Fair Housing v.
Berkeley, 454 U. S. 290, 299 (1981)
("Placing limits on contributions which in turn limit expenditures
plainly impairs freedom of expression"). Instead, the Court
abstracted from a candidate's individual right to speak and focused
exclusively on aggregate campaign funding. See
Buckley v.
Valeo, supra, at 21 ("There is no indication ... that the
contribution limitations imposed by the Act would have any dramatic
adverse effect on the funding of campaigns") (quoted
ante,
at 395);
ante, at 395-396 (There is "no showing that 'the
limitations prevented candidates and political committees from
amassing the resources necessary for effective advocacy''' (quoting
Buckley v.
Valeo, supra, at 21)).
The Court's flawed and unsupported aggregate approach ignores
both the rights and value of individual candidates. The First
Amendment "is designed and intended to remove governmental
restraints from the arena of public discussion, putting the
decision as to what views shall be voiced largely into the hands of
each of us, in the hope that use of such freedom will
ultimately produce a more capable citizenry and more perfect polity
and in the belief that no other approach would comport with the
premise of
individual dignity and choice upon which our
political system rests."
Cohen v.
California,
403 U. S. 15, 24
(1971) (emphases added). See also
Sweezy v.
New
Hampshire, 354 U.
S. 234, 250 (1957) (plurality opinion) ("Our form of government
is built on the premise that every citizen shall have the right to
engage in political expression and association");
Richmond
v.
J. A. Croson Co., 488 U. S. 469, 493 (1989)
(plurality opinion) ("As this Court has noted in the past, the
'rights created by the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment
are, by its terms, guaranteed to the individual. The rights
established are personal
420
rights'" (quoting
Shelley v.
Kraemer, 334 U. S. 1,22 (1948))). In
short, the right to free speech is a right held by each American,
not by Americans en masse. The Court in
Buckley provided no
basis for suppressing the speech of an individual candidate simply
because other candidates (or candidates in the aggregate) may
succeed in reaching the voting public. And any such reasoning would
fly in the face of the premise of our political system-liberty
vested in individual hands safeguards the functioning of our
democracy. In the case at hand, the Missouri scheme has a clear and
detrimental effect on a candidate such as respondent Fredman, who
lacks the advantages of incumbency, name recognition, or
substantial personal wealth, but who has managed to attract the
support of a relatively small number of dedicated supporters: It
forbids his message from reaching the voters. And the silencing of
a candidate has consequences for political debate and competition
overall. See
Arkansas Ed. Television Comm'n v.
Forbes, 523 U.
S. 666, 692, n. 14 (1998) (STEVENS, J., dissenting) (noting
that the suppression of a minor candidate's speech may directly
affect the outcome of an election); cf.
NAACP v.
Button, 371 U.
S. 415, 431 (1963) (" 'All political ideas cannot and should
not be channeled into the programs of our two major parties.
History has amply proved the virtue of political activity by
minority, dissident groups ... ,,, (quoting
Sweezy v.
New
Hampshire, supra, at 250-251 (plurality opinion))).
In my view, the Constitution leaves it entirely up to citizens
and candidates to determine who shall speak, the means they will
use, and the amount of speech sufficient to inform and persuade.
Buckley's ratification of the government's attempt to wrest
this fundamental right from citizens was error.
III
Today, the majority blindly adopts
Buckley's flawed
reasoning without so much as pausing to consider the collapse
of
421
the speech-by-proxy argument or the reality that
Buckley's remaining premises fall when deprived of that
support.7
After ignoring these shortcomings, the Court proceeds to apply
something less-much less-than strict scrutiny. Just how much less
the majority never says. The Court in
Buckley at least
purported to employ a test of" 'closest scrutiny.'" 424 U. S., at
25 (quoting
NAACP v.
Alabama ex rel. Patterson,
357 U. S. 449,
461 (1958)). (The Court's words were belied by its actions,
however, and it never deployed the test in the fashion that the
superlative instructs. See
Colorado Republican, 518 U. S.,
at 640-641, n. 7 (THOMAS, J., concurring in judgment and dissenting
in part) (noting that
Buckley purported to apply strict
scrutiny but failed to do so in fact).) The Court today abandons
even that pretense and reviews contributions under the
sui
generis "Buckley's standard of scrutiny,"
ante, at 387,
which fails to obscure the Court's ad hoc balancing away of First
Amendment rights. Apart from its endorsement of
Buckley's
rejection of the intermediate standards of review used to evaluate
expressive conduct and time, place, and manner restrictions,
ante, at 386, the Court makes no effort to justify its
deviation from the tests we traditionally employ in free speech
cases. See
Denver Area Ed. Telecommunications Consortium,
Inc. v.
FCC, 518 U. S. 727, 774 (1996)
(SOUTER, J., concurring) ("Reviewing speech regulations under
fairly strict categorical rules keeps the starch in the standards
for those moments
7 Implicitly, however, the majority downplays its reliance upon
the speech-by-proxy argument. In fact, the majority reprints nearly
all of
Buckley's analysis of contributors' speech interests,
block quoting almost an entire paragraph from that decision. See
ante, at 386-387 (quoting
Buckley v.
Valeo,
424 U. S., at 20-21). Tellingly, the only complete sentence from
that paragraph that the majority fails to quote is the final
sentence-which happens to be the one directly setting forth the
speechby-proxy rationale. See
id., at 21 ("While
contributions may result in political expression if spent by a
candidate or an association to present views to the voters, the
transformation of contributions into political debate involves
speech by someone other than the contributor").
422
when the daily politics cries loudest for limiting what may be
said").
Unfortunately, the majority does not stop with a revision of
Buckley's labels. After hiding behind
Buckley's
discredited reasoning and invoking
"Buckley's standard of
scrutiny,"
ante, at 387, the Court proceeds to significantly
extend the holding in that case. The Court's substantive departure
from
Buckley begins with a revision of our
compellinginterest jurisprudence. In
Buckley, the Court
indicated that the only interest that could qualify as "compelling"
in this area was the government's interest in reducing actual and
apparent corruption.8 424 U. S., at 25-26. And the Court repeatedly
used the word "corruption" in the narrow
quid pro quo sense,
meaning "[p]erversion or destruction of integrity in the discharge
of public duties by bribery or favour." 3 Oxford English Dictionary
974 (2d ed. 1989). See also Webster's Third New International
Dictionary 512 (1976) ("inducement (as of a political official) by
means of improper considerations (as bribery) to commit a violation
of duty"). When the Court set forth the interest in preventing
actual corruption, it spoke about "large contributions ... given to
secure a political
quid pro quo from current and potential
office holders."
Buckley v.
Valeo, 424 U. S., at 26.
The Court used similar language when it set forth the interest in
protecting against the appearance of corruption: "Of almost equal
concern as the danger of actual
quid pro quo arrangements is
the impact of the appearance of corruption stemming from public
awareness of the opportunities for abuse inherent in a regime of
large individual financial con-
8 The Court in
Buckley explicitly rejected two other
proffered rationales for campaign finance regulation as out of tune
with the First Amendment: equalization of the ability of citizens
to affect the outcome of elections and controlling the costs of
campaigns. See 424 U. S., at 48-49 (governmentally imposed
equalization measures are "wholly foreign to the First Amendment");
id., at 57 (mounting costs of elections "provid[e] no basis
for governmental restrictions on the quantity of campaign
spending").
423
tributions."
Id., at 27. Later, in discussing limits on
independent expenditures, the Court yet again referred to the
interest in protecting against the "dangers of actual or apparent
quid pro quo arrangements."
Id., at 45. See also
id., at 47 (referring to "the danger that expenditures will
be given as a
quid pro quo for improper commitments");
id., at 67 (corruption relates to "post-election special
favors that may be given in return" for contributions). To be sure,
after mentioning
quid pro quo transactions, the Court went
on to use more general terms such as "opportunities for abuse,"
id., at 27, "potential for abuse,"
id., at 47,
"improper influence,"
id., at 27, 29, 45, "attempts ... to
influence,"
id., at 28, and "buy[ing] influence,"
id., at 45. But this general language acquires concrete
meaning only in light of the preceding specific references to
quid pro quo arrangements.
Almost a decade after
Buckley, we reiterated that
"corruption" has a narrow meaning with respect to contribution
limitations on individuals:
"Corruption is a subversion of the political process. Elected
officials are influenced to act contrary to their obligations of
office by the prospect of financial gain to themselves or infusions
of money into their campaigns. The hallmark of corruption is the
financial quid pro quo: dollars for political favors."
National Conservative Political Action Comm., 470 U. S., at
497.
In that same opinion, we also used "giving official favors" as a
synonym for corruption.
Id., at 498.
The majority today, by contrast, separates "corruption" from its
quid pro quo roots and gives it a new, far-reaching (and
speech-suppressing) definition, something like "[t]he perversion of
anything from an original state of purity." 3 Oxford English
Dictionary,
supra, at 974. See also Webster's Third New
International Dictionary,
supra, at 512 ("a departure from
what is pure or correct"). And the Court proceeds to define that
state of purity, casting aspersions on
424
"politicians too compliant with the wishes of large
contributors."
Ante, at 389. "But precisely what the
'corruption' may consist of we are never told with assurance."
National Conservative Political Action Comm., supra, at 498.
Presumably, the majority does not mean that politicians should be
free of attachments to constituent groupS.9 And the majority does
not explicitly rely upon the "harm" that the Court in
Buckley rejected out of hand, namely, that speech could be
regulated to equalize the voices of citizens.
Buckley v.
Valeo, supra, at 48-49. Instead, without bothering to offer
any elaboration, much less justification, the majority permits
vague and unenumerated harms to suffice as a compelling reason for
the government to smother political speech.
In refashioning
Buckley, the Court then goes on to weaken
the requisite precision in tailoring, while at the same time
representing that its fiat "do[es] not relax
Buckley's
standard."
Ante, at 390, n. 4. The fact is that the majority
rati-
9 The Framers, of course, thought such attachments inevitable in
a free society and that faction would infest the political process.
As to controlling faction, James Madison explained, "There are
again two methods of removing the causes of faction: the one, by
destroying the liberty which is essential to its existence; the
other, by giving to every citizen the same opinions, the same
passions, and the same interests." The Federalist No. 10, p. 78
(C. Rossiter ed. 1961). Contribution caps are an example of
the first method, which Madison contemptuously dismissed:
"It could never be more truly said than of the first remedy that
it was worse than the disease. Liberty is to faction what air is to
fire, an aliment without which it instantly expires. But it could
not be a less folly to abolish liberty, which is essential to
political life, because it nourishes faction than it would be to
wish the annihilation of air, which is essential to animal life,
because it imparts to fire its destructive agency."
Ibid.
The Framers preferred a political system that harnessed such
faction for good, preserving liberty while also ensuring good
government. Rather than adopting the repressive "cure" for faction
that the majority today endorses, the Framers armed individual
citizens with a remedy. "If a faction consists of less than a
majority, relief is supplied by the republican principle, which
enables the majority to defeat its sinister views by regular vote."
Id., at 80.
425
ties a law with a much broader sweep than that approved in
Buckley. In
Buckley, the Court upheld contribution
limits of $1,000 on individuals and $5,000 on political committees
(in 1976 dollars). 424 U. S., at 28-29, 35-36. Here, by contrast,
the Court approves much more restrictive contribution limitations,
ranging from $250 to $1,000 (in 1995 dollars) for both individuals
and political committees. Mo. Rev. Stat. § 130.032.1 (Supp. 1999).
The disparity between Missouri's caps and those upheld in
Buck
ley is more pronounced when one takes into account some measure
of inflation. See
Shrink Missouri Government PAC v.
Adams, 161 F.3d
519, 523, and n. 4
(CA8 1998) (noting that, according to
the Consumer Price Index, a dollar today purchases about a third of
what it did in 1976 when
Buckley was decided). Yet the
Court's opinion gives not a single indication that the two laws may
differ in their tailoring. See
ante, at 395 (Missouri's caps
are "striking [in their] resemblance to the limitations sustained
in
Buckley"). The Court fails to pay any regard to the
drastically lower level of the limits here, fails to explain why
political committees should be subjected to the same limits as
individuals, and fails to explain why caps that vary with the size
of political districts are tailored to corruption. I cannot fathom
how a $251 contribution could pose a substantial risk of
"secur[ing] a political
quid pro quo." Buckley v.
Valeo,
supra, at 26. Thus, contribution caps set at such levels could
never be "closely drawn,"
ante, at 387 (quoting
Buckley v.
Valeo, supra, at 25), to preventing
quid pro quo corruption. The majority itself undertakes no
such defense.
The Court also reworks
Buckley's aggregate approach to
the free speech rights of candidates. It begins on the same track
as
Buckley, noting that "a showing of one affected
individual does not point up a system of suppressed political
advocacy that would be unconstitutional under
Buckley."
Ante, at 396. See also,
e. g., ibid. (claiming that
candidates "'are still able to amass impressive campaign war
chests'"
426
(quoting
Shrink Missouri Government PAC v.
Adams,
5 F. Supp. 2d 734, 741 (ED Mo. 1998))). But the Court quickly
deviates from
Buckley, persuading itself that Missouri's
limits do not suppress political speech because, prior to the
enactment of contribution limits, "97.62 percent of all
contributors to candidates for state auditor made contributions of
$2,000 or less."
Ante, at 396. But this statistical anecdote
offers the Court no refuge and the citizenry no comfort. As an
initial matter, the statistic provides no assurance that Missouri's
law has not reduced the resources supporting political speech,
since the largest contributors provide a disproportionate amount of
funds. The majority conspicuously offers no data revealing the
percentage of funds provided by large contributors. (At least the
Court in
Buckley relied on the
percentage of funds
raised by contributions in excess of the limits. 424 U. S., at
21-22, n. 23, 26, n. 27.) But whatever the data would reveal, the
Court's position would remain indefensible. If the majority's
assumption is incorrect-i.
e., if Missouri's contribution
limits actually do significantly reduce campaign speech-then the
majority's calm assurance that political speech remains unaffected
collapses. If the majority's assumption is correct-i.
e., if
large contributions provide very little assistance to a candidate
seeking to get out his message (and thus will not be missed when
capped)-then the majority's reasoning still falters. For if large
contributions offer as little help to a candidate as the Court
maintains, then the Court fails to explain why a candidate would
engage in "corruption" for such a meager benefit. The majority's
statistical claim directly undercuts its constitutional defense
that large contributions pose a substantial risk of
corruption.10
10 The majority's statistical analysis also overlooks the
quantitative data in the record that directly undercut its position
that Missouri's law does not create "a system of suppressed
political advocacy."
Ante, at 396. For example, the Court
does not bother to note that following the imposition of
contribution limits, total combined spending during primary and
427
Given the majority's ill-advised and illiberal aggregate rights
approach, it is unsurprising that the Court's
pro forma hunt
for suppressed speech proves futile. See
ante, at 395397.
Such will always be the case, for courts have no yardstick by which
to judge the proper amount and effectiveness of campaign speech.
See,
e. g., Smith, Faulty Assumptions and
Undemocratic Consequences of Campaign Finance Reform, 105 Yale L.
J. 1049, 1061 (1996). I, however, would not fret about such
matters. The First Amendment vests choices about the proper amount
and effectiveness of political advocacy not in the
government-whether in the legislatures or the courts-but in the
people.
IV
In light of the importance of political speech to republican
government, Missouri's substantial restriction of speech warrants
strict scrutiny, which requires that contribution limits be
narrowly tailored to a compelling governmental interest. See
Buckley v.
American Constitutional Law Foundation,
Inc.,
525 U. S.
182, 207 (1999) (THOMAS, J., concurring in judgment);
Colorado Republican, 518 U. S., at 640-641 (THOMAS, J.,
concurring in judgment and dissenting in part).
general elections for five statewide offices was cut by over
half, falling from $21,599,000 to $9,337,000. See App. 24-28.
Significantly, total primary election expenditures in each of the
races decreased.
Ibid. In fact, after contribution limits
were imposed, overall spending in statewide primary elections
plummeted 89 percent, falling from $14,249,000 to
$1,625,000.
Ibid. Most importantly, the majority does not bother to mention
that before spending caps were enacted each of the 10 statewide
primary elections was contested, with two to four candidates vying
for every nomination in 1992. After caps were enacted, however,
only 1 of the 10 primary elections was contested. Overall, the
total number of candidates participating in statewide primaries
fell from 32 to 11. See
ibid. Even if these data do not
conclusively show that Missouri's contribution limits diminish
political speech (although it is undeniable that the data strongly
suggest such a result), they at least cast great doubt on the
majority's assumption that the picture is rosy.
428
Missouri does assert that its contribution caps are aimed at
preventing actual and apparent corruption. Brief for Petitioners
26-28. As we have noted, "preventing corruption or the appearance
of corruption are the only legitimate and compelling government
interests thus far identified for restricting campaign finances."
National Conservative Political Action Comm., 470 U. S., at
496-497. But the State's contribution limits are not narrowly
tailored to that harm. The limits directly suppress the political
speech of both contributors and candidates, and only clumsily
further the governmental interests that they allegedly serve. They
are crudely tailored because they are massively overinclusive,
prohibiting all donors who wish to contribute in excess of the cap
from doing so and restricting donations without regard to whether
the donors pose any real corruption risk. See
Colorado
Republican, supra, at 642 (THOMAS, J., concurring in judgment
and dissenting in part) (" 'Where First Amendment rights are
involved, a blunderbuss approach which prohibits mostly innocent
speech cannot be held a means narrowly and precisely directed to
the governmental interest in the small minority of contributions
that are not innocent'" (quoting Brief for Appellants in
Buckley v.
Valeo, O. T. 1975, Nos. 75-436 and 75-437,
pp. 117-118)). See also
Martin v.
City of Struthers,
319 U. S. 141,
145 (1943) (Though a method of speaking may be "a blind for
criminal activities, [it] may also be useful [to] members of
society engaged in the dissemination of ideas in accordance with
the best tradition of free discussion"). Moreover, the government
has less restrictive means of addressing its interest in curtailing
corruption. Bribery laws bar precisely the
quid pro quo
arrangements that are targeted here. And disclosure laws "'deter
actual corruption and avoid the appearance of corruption by
exposing large contributions and expenditures to the light of
publicity.'"
American Constitutional Law Foundation, supra,
at 202 (quoting
Buckley v.
Valeo, 424 U. S., at 67).
In fact, Missouri has enacted strict disclo-
429
sure laws. See Mo. Rev. Stat. §§ 130.041, 130.046, 130.057
(Supp. 1999).
In the end, contribution limitations find support only in the
proposition that other means will not be as effective at rooting
out corruption. But when it comes to a significant infringement on
our fundamental liberties, that some undesirable conduct may not be
deterred is an insufficient justification to sweep in vast amounts
of protected political speech. Our First Amendment precedents have
repeatedly stressed this point. For example, in
Martin v.
City of Struthers, supra, we struck down an ordinance
prohibiting door-to-door distribution of handbills. Although we
recognized that "burglars frequently pose as canvassers,"
id., at 144, we also noted that door-to-door distribution
was "useful [to] members of society engaged in the dissemination of
ideas in accordance with the best tradition of free discussion,"
id., at 145. We then struck down the ordinance, observing
that the "dangers of distribution can so easily be controlled by
traditional legal methods."
Id., at 147. Similarly, in
Riley v.
National Federation of Blind of N. c.,
Inc., 487 U.
S. 781 (1988), we struck down a law regulating the fees charged
by professional fundraisers. In response to the assertion that
citizens would be defrauded in the absence of such a law, we
explained that the State had an antifraud law which "we presume[d]
that law enforcement officers [we]re ready and able to enforce,"
id., at 795, and that the State could constitutionally
require fundraisers to disclose certain financial information,
ibid. We concluded by acknowledging the obvious consequences
of the narrow tailoring requirement: "If this is not the most
efficient means of preventing fraud, we reaffirm simply and
emphatically that the First Amendment does not permit the State to
sacrifice speech for efficiency."
Ibid. See also,
e. g.,
Schneider v.
State (Town of Irvington), 308 U. S. 147,
162 (1939) ("There are obvious methods of preventing littering.
Amongst these is the punishment of those who actually throw papers
on the streets").
430
The same principles apply here, and dictate a result contrary to
the one the majority reaches. States are free to enact laws that
directly punish those engaged in corruption and require the
disclosure of large contributions, but they are not free to enact
generalized laws that suppress a tremendous amount of protected
speech along with the targeted corruption.
V
Because the Court unjustifiably discounts the First Amendment
interests of citizens and candidates, and consequently fails to
strictly scrutinize the inhibition of political speech and
competition, I respectfully dissent.
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