Vice President-elect J.D. Vance and Republican committees asked the Supreme Court to overturn federal limits that prevent political parties from coordinating spending with candidates on the grounds that they violate the First Amendment.
The limits on contributions to candidates are much lower than for party committees such as the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) and the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), which along with former Rep. Steve Chabot (R-Ohio) are also claimants. .
“A political party exists to get its candidates elected. Yet Congress has severely limited how much parties can spend on their own campaign advertising when done in conjunction with those same candidates,” the plaintiffs wrote in the petition made public Friday.
The Federal Election Commission (FEC) declined to comment on the lawsuits.
While a candidate can only accept $3,300 per person per election during the 2024 cycle, the NRSC can receive as much as $578,200 per cycle from a single donor.
The limits on how much spending party committees can coordinate with candidates were originally put in place in part to guard against corruption and outsized influence from a small group of wealthy individuals.
The U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against Vance and the party committees in September, but only because the Supreme Court never overturned a 2001 decision upholding the limits.
“Even if the Supreme Court embraces new reasoning in a particular area, and even if that reasoning would undermine the basis of a decision, it remains the Court's burden, not ours, to reject it,” Chief Justice Jeffrey Sutton wrote in the US Supreme Court. time.
The plaintiffs urged the court to hear the case and overturn the decision, arguing that the limits are an affront to the First Amendment rights of political parties and candidates.
“And that constitutional violation has damaged our political system by encouraging donors to send their money elsewhere, fueling the rise of narrowly targeted “super PACs” and an attendant “fall in political party power” on the political market, contributing to a spike in political polarization and fragmentation across the board,” prosecutors wrote.
Zach Schonfeld contributed.
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