SCOTUS Likely To Weaken Campaign Finance Laws

 

The far-right majority on the Supreme Court will hear arguments on Tuesday on whether restrictions on limitations on how much parties can spend in coordination with candidates for office.  From Reuters:

"The U.S. Supreme Court for decades has chipped away at campaign finance laws, deciding they suppress political speech in violation of constitutional protections. A case involving U.S. Vice President JD Vance being argued next week gives the court and its conservative majority a chance to amplify this trend. [snip]

The Supreme Court is hearing arguments on Tuesday in the case, which could further reshape the U.S. campaign finance system by dismantling yet another spending limit at a time when critics argue that big-money donors already exert too much influence on American elections.

Republican President Donald Trump's administration is supporting his vice president's stance in the case. A ruling is expected by the end of June.

If history is any guide, the court, with its 6-3 conservative majority, is likely to rule in favor of the Republicans challenging the campaign finance regulation on free speech grounds, according to Jessica Levinson, a professor at Loyola Law School in California."  (our emphasis)

The "campaign contributions as a form of speech" has been a right-wing canard for decades, as if a billionaires "speech" deserves to be thousands of times more impactful than a fireman from the Midwest.  Thus a SCOTUS decision overturning the lower court's ruling would be music to the ears of the likes of South Afrikaner fascist Elon Musk and Silicon Valley tech bros billionaires, who have turned to the Republican Party of the Malignant Fascist for the elimination of regulations, restraint of competition, and other favors that they're willing to pay for.  The Brennan Center for Justice has this to say:

"The more fundamental question is who should decide these regulations. As the Brennan Center made clear in our friend-of-the-court brief, the answer is not the Supreme Court.

The Court’s own track record on campaign finance shows why judges are poorly suited to this task. In Citizens United and subsequent cases, the Court relied on unfounded assumptions and hypotheticals rather than robust factual records. Unsurprisingly, these interventions have resulted in unintended (but predictable) consequences for American democracy.

For example, despite the Court’s repeated assurances that outside groups pose no risk of corruption because they operate 'independently' from candidates, super PACs have emerged as vectors for corruption as they accept unlimited, often anonymous contributions and increasingly work hand-in-glove with campaigns. Federal elections are awash in billions of dollars from anonymous dark money sources after the Court wrongly assumed that disclosure rules would ensure donor transparency. Perhaps most troubling, trust in government has cratered despite the Court’s unfounded claim that the sale of access and influence would 'not cause the electorate to lose faith in our democracy.'”  (our emphasis)

If a ruling moves the ball forward for a corporate fascist America, as the SCOTUS has shown in the recent Texas gerrymandering decision, they'll get behind it.  It's an invitation for Dems to expand the Court as soon as the opportunity arises to save democracy in this country.