A narrowly divided Supreme
Court on Monday reaffirmed its landmark 2010 decision allowing corporations to
spend unlimited money on elections, deciding 5 to 4 that a state court was
wrong to uphold Montana's century-old ban on political spending by businesses.
The court decision - two paragraphs issued without hearings or
debate - further inflamed a national argument over the role of big money in
politics, which has become a central feature of the expensive race for the
White House between President Obama and Mitt Romney.
A constellation of independent groups is poised to spend $1
billion or more on the 2012 elections, much of it raised in secret from
billionaires and corporations. The spending is made possible in part by the
court's 2010 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election
Commission, which found that companies and unions have a
free-speech right to donate unlimited amounts for and against candidates.
This atmosphere of fevered spending had triggered hopes among
critics that the court might reconsider the ruling. But Monday's decision
appears to scuttle any chance of that, at least for now.
Obama spokesman Eric Schultz said the White House was
"disappointed" that the court did not revisit the case.
"Citizens
United mistakenly
overruled long-standing cases that protected the fairness and integrity of
elections," Schultz said. "Unfortunately, the court today missed an
opportunity to correct that mistake."
The case involved a Montana law forbidding corporate political
spending. The law dated to 1912, when the "copper kings" and other
mining barons largely controlled the state's politics. Montana's high court
said that, even after Citizens United, the
legacy of corruption and other factors unique to Montana justified a ban on
spending by corporations regulated by the state.
But the same five justices who formed the majority in Citizens
United said in an unsigned opinion that Montana's arguments "either were
already rejected in Citizens United, or fail to meaningfully distinguish that
case." The decision had the effect of overturning Montana's law.
Justice Stephen G. Breyer
penned a short dissent for the four-judge minority, writing that Montana's
experience "casts grave doubt on the Court's supposition that independent
expenditures do not corrupt or appear to do so."
Justice Elena Kagan - who argued the Citizens
United case as
Obama's solicitor general - joined Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Sonia
Sotomayor in the dissent. Although Breyer and Ginsburg said in February that
the court should use the case to revisit Citizens United, Breyer
wrote Monday that he did "not see a significant possibility of
reconsideration" by the majority.
Monday's decision drew strong condemnations from activists who
favor tougher limits on money in politics and fulsome praise from those opposed
to such regulations.
"Citizens and the nation are not going to accept the Supreme
Court-imposed campaign finance system that allows our government to be
auctioned off to billionaires, millionaires, corporate funders and other
special interests," said Democracy 21's Fred Wertheimer, a longtime
activist who helped draft many of the nation's post-Watergate election laws.
James Bopp Jr., an attorney for the Montana plaintiffs and a key
architect of national challenges to campaign finance laws, called the decision
"excellent" and said it "shut the door" on reconsideration
of Citizens United.
Richard Hasen, a law professor at the University of California at
Irvine, wrote on his election law blog that the outcome of the Montana case is
actually a "relative victory for campaign-finance reformers" because
the five-justice majority shows no signs of budging on Citizens
United.
"Taking the case would have made things so much worse,"
Hasen wrote.
The five justices who made up the majority in Citizens
United remain on the
court and have consistently held that many legislative attempts to control the
influence of money in politics run afoul of constitutional guarantees of free
speech.
Besides lifting the ban on corporate and union expenditures, a lower
court and the FEC have interpreted the Citizens United ruling to mean that unlimited
individual contributions must be allowed, clearing the way for "super
PACs," fund-raising groups closely identified with candidates but
technically independent.