Vice President-elect J.D. Vance and two Republican committees have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn federal limits that restrict political parties from coordinating spending with individual candidates, arguing the ruling violates the First Amendment, the Hill reported on Friday.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee are co-plaintiffs in the filing along with former Republican Rep. Steve Chabot of Ohio. The filing asks the court to overturn a previous decision that has capped limits to individual candidates. Currently, candidates can only accept $3,300 per person, per election, according to the Federal Election Commission, while the NRSC could receive up to $578,200 from one donor per cycle.
“A political party exists to get its candidates elected. Yet Congress has severely restricted how much parties can spend on their own campaign advertising if done in cooperation with those very candidates,” the plaintiffs wrote in the petition.
In September, the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against Vance and the party committees because the Supreme Court never overturned a 2001 decision that upheld the contribution limits. The plaintiffs noted that even in the unfavorable ruling, Chief Judge Sutton agreed that these coordinated party expenditure limits “stand in serious tension with recent First Amendment doctrine.”
“And that constitutional violation has harmed our political system by leading donors to send their funds elsewhere, fueling ‘the rise of narrowly focused 'super PACs' and an attendant ‘fall of political parties’ power’ in the political marketplace, which has contributed to a spike in political polarization and fragmentation across the board,” the plaintiffs continued.