What was the effect of the Supreme Courts ruling in Citizens United v Federal Election Commission a it removed limitations on corporate funding of?

This month marks ten years since the Supreme Court’s major ruling in the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission case. The ruling removed reasonable campaign contribution limits and has allowed a small group of individuals and corporations to spend enormous sums of money on campaigns without disclosing their identities. As a result, this “dark” money has been able to drown out the will of the people on key issues.

The American people elected House Democrats on the pledge that we would clean up corruption in Washington and ensure that government worked for the people. One of the first bills to come to the Floor under the Democratic Majority was H.R. 1, the For the People Act. This legislation reforms our campaign finance system to undo the disastrous consequences of Citizens United and includes other critical government reforms. Here’s a look at how this comprehensive government reform measure and other legislation passed by the House will return us to a government that is of, by, and for the people:

THE IMPACT OF THE CITIZENS UNITED DECISION

In Citizens United v. FEC, the Supreme Court asserted that corporations are people and removed reasonable campaign contribution limits, allowing a small group of wealthy donors and special interests to use dark money to influence elections. This has led to policies that benefit special interests, not policies that enjoy support from the majority of Americans. According to an analysis by End Citizens United:

Outside groups have spent over $4.4 billion in federal elections since the Citizens United decision.
Of the $4.4 billion, nearly $1 billion has been spent in federal elections as untraceable, “dark money” expenditures since the decision.
Eighty-six percent of all outside spending in federal elections in the past 30 years has come in the ten years since the decision.

HOUSE DEMOCRATS PASS REFORMS TO OUR CAMPAIGN FINANCE SYSTEM

In March 2019, the House passed H.R. 1, the For the People Act. The bill addressed the Citizens United decision by reforming our campaign finance system, ensuring complete transparency, and putting in place reasonable limits. Specifically, the legislation:

Expresses Congress’ intent to curb the use of shell companies and other illicit activities that allow foreign money to enter and undermine our democracy.
Bans foreign money.
Ensures disclosure of online political ads.
Requires all political organizations to disclose their large donors.
Prohibits big-money contributors and special interests from hiding the true funding sources of their political spending.
Empowers citizens by establishing a matching system for small donations.
Restructures the Federal Election Commission to have five commissioners in order to break gridlock, devotes resources to ensure campaign finance laws are enforced, and improves oversight of existing campaign finance laws.

HOUSE DEMOCRATS PASS ADDITIONAL REFORMS
TO MAKE GOVERNMENT WORK FOR THE PEOPLE

In addition to campaign finance reforms, the For the People Act puts in place other reforms to ensure government works for the people:

Redistricting Reform: Puts in place national redistricting reform by requiring states to adopt independent redistricting commissions for purposes of drawing Congressional districts.
Ethics Reform: Demands accountability and guarantees public officials put constituents first by:
- Prohibiting Members of Congress from serving on corporate boards.
- Requires the online linking of Federal Election Commission reports and Lobbying Disclosure Act reports.
- Prohibiting Members of Congress from using taxpayer funds to settle any case of employment discrimination acts by the Members.
- Requiring presidents t disclose ten years of federal tax returns.
- Strengthening the Office f Government Ethics.
- Closing loopholes for lobbyists and foreign agents.
- Addressing conflicts of interest in the Executive Branch.
- Instituting a code of ethics for the Supreme Court.
Voting Reforms: Ensures clean and fair elections and makes it easier for Americans to exercise their right to vote by:
- Creating automatic voter registration.
- Expanding early voting and targets policies that lead to disenfranchisement and limit voting hours.
- Restring voting rights to citizens who have served felony sentences.
- Providing financial support to improve election infrastructure and improves oversight by requiring a national strategy for protecting U.S. democratic institutions.
- Prohibiting voter roll purges, a tactic used in Georgia, Texas, North Dakota, Missouri, Ohio and other states to kick eligible voters off the voting rolls.

The House has also passed legislation to restore voting rights and secure our elections, so that every American can exercise their most fundamental right and voice their will on key issues:

Voting Rights: In December 2019, the House passed H.R. 4, the Voting Rights Amendment Act, to restore the full protections of the Voting Rights Act and combat voter suppression.
Election Security: The House has also passed two major bills to secure our elections and prevent foreign interference:
- Securing America’s Federal Elections Act: In June 2019, House Democrats passed an election security bill that authorizes a $600 million Election Assistance Commission (EAC) grant program to assist states in securing election infrastructure.
- The SHIELD Act: In October 2019, House Democrats passed a bipartisan election security bill to prevent foreign interference in our elections and defend the integrity of our voting systems.

HOUSE DEMOCRATS CONTINUE TO CALL ON THE SENATE TO TAKE ACTION

Government reform continues to be a top priority of the American people. According to a poll from the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy and the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, 66% of the public thinks that major changes are needed to the U.S. government. House Democrats have passed comprehensive reforms to return government to the people and are continuing to call on Senator McConnell to allow consideration of this legislation in the Senate.

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WASHINGTON — Overruling two important precedents about the First Amendment rights of corporations, a bitterly divided Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that the government may not ban political spending by corporations in candidate elections.

The 5-to-4 decision was a vindication, the majority said, of the First Amendment’s most basic free speech principle — that the government has no business regulating political speech. The dissenters said that allowing corporate money to flood the political marketplace would corrupt democracy.

The ruling represented a sharp doctrinal shift, and it will have major political and practical consequences. Specialists in campaign finance law said they expected the decision to reshape the way elections were conducted. Though the decision does not directly address them, its logic also applies to the labor unions that are often at political odds with big business.

The decision will be felt most immediately in the coming midterm elections, given that it comes just two days after Democrats lost a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate and as popular discontent over government bailouts and corporate bonuses continues to boil.

President Obama called it “a major victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies and the other powerful interests that marshal their power every day in Washington to drown out the voices of everyday Americans.”

The justices in the majority brushed aside warnings about what might follow from their ruling in favor of a formal but fervent embrace of a broad interpretation of free speech rights.

Justices Anthony M. Kennedy and John Paul Stevens, right.Credit...Reuters, left; Bloomberg

“If the First Amendment has any force,” Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the majority, which included the four members of the court’s conservative wing, “it prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens, or associations of citizens, for simply engaging in political speech.”

The 2002 law, usually called McCain-Feingold, banned the broadcast, cable or satellite transmission of “electioneering communications” paid for by corporations or labor unions from their general funds in the 30 days before a presidential primary and in the 60 days before the general elections.

The law, as narrowed by a 2007 Supreme Court decision, applied to communications “susceptible to no reasonable interpretation other than as an appeal to vote for or against a specific candidate.”

The five opinions in Thursday’s decision ran to more than 180 pages, with Justice John Paul Stevens contributing a passionate 90-page dissent. In sometimes halting fashion, he summarized it for some 20 minutes from the bench on Thursday morning.

Joined by the other three members of the court’s liberal wing, Justice Stevens said the majority had committed a grave error in treating corporate speech the same as that of human beings.

Eight of the justices did agree that Congress can require corporations to disclose their spending and to run disclaimers with their advertisements, at least in the absence of proof of threats or reprisals. “Disclosure permits citizens and shareholders to react to the speech of corporate entities in a proper way,” Justice Kennedy wrote. Justice Clarence Thomas dissented on this point.

Dave Bossie, President of Citizens United, spoke to the press following Thursday’s Supreme Court decision. Credit...Luke Sharrett/The New York Times

The majority opinion did not disturb bans on direct contributions to candidates, but the two sides disagreed about whether independent expenditures came close to amounting to the same thing.

“The difference between selling a vote and selling access is a matter of degree, not kind,” Justice Stevens wrote. “And selling access is not qualitatively different from giving special preference to those who spent money on one’s behalf.”

Justice Kennedy responded that “by definition, an independent expenditure is political speech presented to the electorate that is not coordinated with a candidate.”

The case had unlikely origins. It involved a documentary called “Hillary: The Movie,” a 90-minute stew of caustic political commentary and advocacy journalism. It was produced by Citizens United, a conservative nonprofit corporation, and was released during the Democratic presidential primaries in 2008.

Citizens United lost a suit that year against the Federal Election Commission, and scuttled plans to show the film on a cable video-on-demand service and to broadcast television advertisements for it. But the film was shown in theaters in six cities, and it remains available on DVD and the Internet.

The majority cited a score of decisions recognizing the First Amendment rights of corporations, and Justice Stevens acknowledged that “we have long since held that corporations are covered by the First Amendment.”

But Justice Stevens defended the restrictions struck down on Thursday as modest and sensible. Even before the decision, he said, corporations could act through their political action committees or outside the specified time windows.

Senator Charles E. Schumer, left, accompanied by Rep. Chris Van Hollen, spoke about campaign finance reform after the Supreme Court ruling on Thursday.Credit...Lauren Victoria Burke/Associated Press

The McCain-Feingold law contains an exception for broadcast news reports, commentaries and editorials. But that is, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote in a concurrence joined by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., “simply a matter of legislative grace.”

Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion said that there was no principled way to distinguish between media corporations and other corporations and that the dissent’s theory would allow Congress to suppress political speech in newspapers, on television news programs, in books and on blogs.

Justice Stevens responded that people who invest in media corporations know “that media outlets may seek to influence elections.” He added in a footnote that lawmakers might now want to consider requiring corporations to disclose how they intended to spend shareholders’ money or to put such spending to a shareholder vote.

On its central point, Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion was joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Alito, Thomas and Antonin Scalia. Justice Stevens’s dissent was joined by Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor.

When the case was first argued last March, it seemed a curiosity likely to be decided on narrow grounds. The court could have ruled that Citizens United was not the sort of group to which the McCain-Feingold law was meant to apply, or that the law did not mean to address 90-minute documentaries, or that video-on-demand technologies were not regulated by the law. Thursday’s decision rejected those alternatives.

Instead, it addressed the questions it proposed to the parties in June when it set down the case for an unusual second argument in September, those of whether Austin and McConnell should be overruled. The answer, the court ruled Thursday, was yes.

“When government seeks to use its full power, including the criminal law, to command where a person may get his or her information or what distrusted source he or she may not hear, it uses censorship to control thought,” Justice Kennedy wrote. “This is unlawful. The First Amendment confirms the freedom to think for ourselves.”