Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1 (1976), is a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court on campaign finance. A majority of justices held that, as provided by section 608 of the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971, limits on election expenditures are unconstitutional. In a per curiam (by the Court) opinion, they ruled that expenditure limits contravene the First Amendment provision on freedom of speech because a restriction on spending for political communication necessarily reduces the quantity of expression. It limited disclosure provisions and limited the Federal Election Commission's power. Justice Byron White dissented in part and wrote that Congress had legitimately recognized unlimited election spending as "a mortal danger against which effective preventive and curative steps must be taken".
Buckley v. Valeo was extended by the U.S. Supreme Court in further cases, including in the five to four decision of First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti in 1978. and Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission in 2010. The latter held that corporations may spend from their general treasuries during elections. In 2014, McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission held that aggregate limits on political giving by an individual are unconstitutional.McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, 572 U.S. 185 (2014) By some measures, Buckley is the longest opinion ever issued by the Supreme Court.
Facts Congress had made previous attempts to regulate campaign finance. It passed the Tillman Act of 1907, and then the Taft–Hartley Act in 1947. Neither was well enforced. In 1974, Congress passed significant amendments to the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 (FECA), creating the most comprehensive effort by the federal government to date to regulate federal campaign contributions and spending. President Gerald Ford signed the bill into law on October 15. The key parts of the amended law did the following: limited contributions to candidates for federal office (2 USC §441a) required the disclosure of political contributions (2 USC §434), provided for the public financing of presidential elections (IRC Subtitle H), limited expenditures by candidates and associated committees, limited independent expenditures to $1,000 (formerly 18 U.S.C. §608e), limited candidate expenditures from personal funds (formerly 18 U.S.C. §608a), created and fixed the method of appointing members to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) (formerly 2 U.S.C. §437c(a) (1)(A–C)). Eight members of the commission were to be chosen as follows: the Secretary of the Senate and the Clerk of the House of Representatives were ex officio members of the Commission without a right to vote; two members would be appointed by the President pro tempore of the Senate upon recommendations of the majority and minority leaders of the Senate; two would be appointed by the Speaker of the House of Representatives upon recommendations of the majority and minority leaders of the House, and two would be appointed by the President. The six voting members would then need to be confirmed by the majority of both Houses of Congress. In addition, there was a requirement that each of the three appointing authorities was forbidden to choose both of their appointees from the same political party.
The lawsuit was filed in the District Court for the District of Columbia, on January 2, 1975, by U.S. Senator James L. Buckley (a member of the Conservative Party of New York State), former U.S. Senator and 1968 presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy (a Democrat from Minnesota), the New York Civil Liberties Union, the American Conservative Union, the Socialist Workers Party, the Libertarian Party, and numerous other plaintiffs. The named defendant in the caption was Francis R. Valeo, the Secretary of the Senate, an ex officio member of the FEC who represented the U.S. federal government. The trial court denied plaintiffs' request for declaratory and injunctive relief. Plaintiffs then appealed to the Court of Appeals and finally to the Supreme Court.
The plaintiffs argued that the legislation violated the 1st and 5th Amendment rights to freedom of expression and due process, respectively.
Judgment In a per curiam opinion, the Supreme Court held that several key provisions of the Campaign Finance Act, § 608(a), which limited expenditure by political campaigns, are unconstitutional and contrary to the First Amendment. The major holdings were as follows: The Court upheld limits on contributions to candidates. The Court upheld limitations on volunteers' incidental expenses. The Court upheld the aggregate limit on an individual's total contributions to all candidates and committees in a calendar year. The Court struck down limits on expenditures by candidates. The Court struck down limits on independent expenditures (i.e., expenditures by other groups or individuals than candidates and political parties). The Court upheld mandatory disclosure and reporting provisions, but it narrowed the types of speech to which they could apply. The Court upheld a system of voluntary government funding of campaigns, including limits on spending by candidates who choose to accept government subsidies. The Court struck down the system by which members of Congress directly appointed Federal Election Commission commissioners.
The Court's opinion begins by stating certain "General Principles", and then dealing with individual parts of the law in turn.
General principles First, the Court cited the importance of the First Amendment issues at stake: "The Act's contribution and expenditure limitations operate in an area of the most fundamental First Amendment activities. Discussion of public issues and debate on the qualifications of candidates are integral to the operation of the system of government established by our Constitution. The First Amendment affords the broadest protection to such political expression in order 'to assure (the) unfettered interchange of ideas for the bringing about of political and social changes desired by the people.'" The Court stated that these issues include "political association as well as political expression." The Court rejected the idea that limits on campaign contributions and spending merely limited conduct: "[T]his Court has never suggested that the dependence of a communication on the expenditure of money operates itself to ... reduce the exacting scrutiny required by the First Amendment." The opinion cited New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, and it noted that sending a telegram to a public official—a clearly protected activity—costs money. Further, even if considered "conduct", the Court found that "it is beyond dispute that the interest in regulating the alleged 'conduct' of giving or spending money 'arises in some measure because the communication allegedly integral to the conduct is itself thought to be harmful.'" The restrictions were not justified under the "times, places, and manner" clause giving the government the authority to regulate elections: The restrictions were "direct quantity restrictions on political communication and association by persons, groups, candidates, and political parties." The Court affirmed a First Amendment interest in spending money to facilitate campaign speech, writing, "A restriction on the amount of money a person or group can spend on political communication during a campaign necessarily reduces the quantity of expression by restricting the number of issues discussed, the depth of their exploration, and the size of the audience reached." Further, the law's "$1,000 ceiling on spending 'relative to a clearly identified candidate,' would appear to exclude all citizens and groups except candidates, political parties, and the institutional press from any significant use of the most effective modes of communication." (citations omitted). However, "limitation[s] upon the amount that any one 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", because such persons or groups are free to communicate directly with voters. Nevertheless, "[g]iven the important role of contributions in financing political campaigns, contribution restrictions could have a severe impact on political dialogue if the limitations prevented candidates and political committees from amassing the resources necessary for effective advocacy." "The Act's contribution and expenditure limitations also impinge on protected associational freedoms. Making a contribution, like joining a political party, serves to affiliate a person with a candidate." Finally, the Court concluded this section by stating, "In sum, although the Act's contribution and expenditure limitations both implicate fundamental First Amendment interests, its expenditure ceilings impose significantly more severe restrictions on protected freedoms of political expression and association than do its limitations on financial contributions."
Contribution limits The Court held that restrictions on "large campaign contributions" are justified by the state's interest in "the prevention of corruption and the appearance of corruption spawned by the real or imagined coercive influence of large financial contributions on candidates' positions and on their actions if elected to office." The Court further defined "corruption" to mean "large contributions ... given to secure a political quid pro quo from current and potential office holders." The Court rejected the plaintiffs' claim that all "contribution limitations must be invalidated because bribery laws and narrowly drawn disclosure requirements constitute a less restrictive means of dealing with 'proven and suspected quid pro quo arrangements.'" Thus the Court upheld the limits on contributions to candidates and their campaign committees, and to parties and political action committees, in the Act.
Expenditure limits The Court first reiterated that "[t]he Act's expenditure ceilings impose direct and substantial restraints on the quantity of political speech." It reviewed the sweeping scope of the law, noting, "The plain effect of [the Act] is to prohibit all individuals, who are neither candidates nor owners of institutional press facilities, and all groups, except political parties and campaign organizations, from voicing their views 'relative to a clearly identified candidate' through means that entail aggregate expenditures of more than $1,000 during a calendar year. The provision, for example, would make it a federal criminal offense for a person or association to place a single one-quarter page advertisement 'relative to a clearly identified candidate' in a major metropolitan newspaper." The Court held that the "key operative language of the provision ... [—]"any expenditure ... relative to a clearly identified candidate"—was unconstitutionally vague, for it "fails to clearly mark the boundary between permissible and impermissible speech, unless other portions of [the Act] make sufficiently explicit the range of expenditures covered by the limitation. The section prohibits 'any expenditure ... relative to a clearly identified candidate during a calendar year which, when added to all other expenditures ... advocating the election or defeat of such candidate, exceeds, $1,000.' (Emphasis added.) This context clearly permits, if indeed it does not require, the phrase "relative to" a candidate to be read to mean 'advocating the election or defeat of' a candidate." The Court elaborated in a footnote that "[t]his construction would restrict the application of [the law] to communications containing express words of advocacy of election or defeat, such as 'vote for,' 'elect,' 'support,' 'cast your ballot for,' 'Smith for Congress,' 'vote against,' 'defeat,' 'reject.'"