campaign finance regulation weakened

Not what i expected...


Supreme Court Loosens Ad Restrictions in Campaign Law


WASHINGTON, June 25 2007— The Supreme Court on Monday took a sharp turn away from campaign finance regulation, opening a wide exception to the advertising restrictions that it upheld when the McCain-Feingold law first came before it four years ago.

In a splintered 5-to-4 decision, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said that as interpreted broadly by federal regulators and the law’s supporters, the restrictions on television advertisements paid for from corporate or union treasuries in the weeks before an election amounted to censorship of core political speech unless those advertisements explicitly urge a vote for or against a particular candidate.

“Where the First Amendment is implicated,” the chief justice said, “the tie goes to the speaker, not the censor.”

Consequently, Chief Justice Roberts said, the only advertisements that can be kept off the air in the pre-election period covered by the law — the 30 days before a primary election and the 60 days before a general election — are those that are “susceptible of no reasonable interpretation other than as an appeal to vote for or against a specific candidate.”

Describing and then dismissing the rationale for the advertising restrictions, Chief Justice Roberts used a phrase that seemed to sum up the new majority’s view toward campaign finance regulation. “Enough is enough,” the chief justice said.

The decision was a reminder of the ways in which the justices appointed by President Bush are moving the court. While Chief Justice Roberts’s predecessor, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, was a dissenter when the court upheld the law four years ago, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor was in the 5-to-4 majority. Her successor, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., voted with Chief Justice Roberts on Monday, and in fact was the only justice to join his opinion fully.

Two other closely divided rulings announced on Monday also showed the influence of the new justices. The court limited student speech and ruled that taxpayers do not have standing to challenge the administration’s program of support for social service programs offered by religious institutions.

Coming as the 2008 presidential race takes off, the campaign finance decision has the effect of jettisoning a major part of the McCain-Feingold law, which Congress passed in 2002 to curb the flow of unregulated “soft money” into federal election campaigns.

While the decision did not deal directly with the soft-money ban, which is in a separate section of the law, election experts said the effect would be to undercut the soft-money section as well by permitting a largely unlimited flow of money from corporate treasuries to pay for the all-important broadcast advertisements in the weeks before primary and general elections. Groups seeking to influence the outcome of the election could easily sidestep the prohibition on explicit appeals for or against candidates, supporters of the law said.

It is not clear which candidate or party is more likely to benefit from the ruling in 2008. But Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican seeking his party’s presidential nomination, may suffer the most in the short term. His sponsorship of the law, formally called the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, is unpopular with conservatives and Republican primary voters, and the Supreme Court’s decision is a reminder of his role.

Although the court’s five most conservative justices voted in the majority and the four more liberal justices were the dissenters, the outcome was not easy to categorize simply along ideological lines. Both sides of the campaign finance debate have always attracted unusual coalitions. Chief Justice Roberts pointed out in his opinion that among the groups supporting the challenge to the law, which was brought by the Wisconsin Right to Life, were the American Civil Liberties Union and the A.F.L.-C.I.O., as well as the United States Chamber of Commerce and the National Rifle Association.

thanks--that was today's decision right--was waiting for it


Jason, DC