WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court has ruled that corporations may invest freely to support or oppose candidates for president and Congress, easing decades-old limits on their participation in federal campaigns.
By a 5-4 vote, the court on Thursday overturned a 20-year-old ruling that told corporations might be prohibited from using cash from their general treasuries to buy their own campaign ads. The measure, which almost definitely will also enable labor unions to take part more freely in campaigns, threatens similar limits imposed by 24 states.
It leaves in place a prohibition on direct contributions to candidates from corporations and unions.
Critics of the stricter limits have argued that they amount to an unconstitutional restraint of free speech, and the court majority apparently agreed.
“The censorship we now confront is extensive in its reach,” Justice Anthony Kennedy told in his majority point of view, joined by his 4 more conservative colleagues.
However, Justice John Paul Stevens, dissenting from the main holding, told, “The court’s ruling threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions around the nation.”
Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor joined Stevens’ dissent, parts of which he read aloud in the courtroom.
The justices additionally struck down component of the landmark McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill that barred union- and corporate-paid issue ads in the closing days of choice campaigns.
Advocates of powerful campaign finance regulations have prognosticated that a court ruling contrary the limits would conduct to a flood of corporate and union cash in federal campaigns as early as this year’s midterm congressional choices.
The measure, written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, removes limits on autonomous expenditures that aren’t coordinated with candidates’ campaigns.
The case also doesn’t affect political action committees, which mushroomed after post-Watergate laws set the first limits on contributions by individuals to candidates. Corporations, unions and others may originate PACs to contribute absolutely to candidates, but they must be funded with voluntary contributions from workers, members and other individuals, not by corporate or union treasuries.
