High Court Bars Limits on Spending by PACs

Political action committees may spend unlimited amounts of money to back a presidential candidate, the Supreme Court ruled today.

By a 7-2 vote, the justices said a federal law that had limited the spending of any political committee to $1,000 violated constitutionally protected freedom of speech.

The Federal Election Commission and the Democratic Party had challenged a lower court’s decision invalidating the spending limit, and today the high court agreed that the law impermissibly restricts “clearly protected conduct.”

Congress created the commission in 1975 to oversee the election reforms it sought. The general constitutionality of those reforms was upheld by the Supreme Court in 1976.

The $1,000 spending limit on political action committees was imposed as part of the reforms enacted after Watergate-related revelations of widespread campaign fund-raising abuses.

Writing for the court today, Justice William H. Rehnquist said Congress went too far.

“The fact that candidates and elected officials may alter or reaffirm their own positions on issues in response to political messages paid for by the PACs can hardly be called corruption, for one of the essential features of democracy is the presentation to the electorate of varying points of view,” Rehnquist said.

Democrats Sued

The controversy over PAC spending arose when Democrats sued two conservative political action committees.

The suit accused the National Conservative Political Action Committee and the Fund for a Conservative Majority of planning to violate the $1,000 spending limit.

In a later suit, the FEC accused the political committees of the same thing.

“Even were we to determine that the large pooling of financial resources by NCPAC and FCM did pose a potential for corruption. . . , (the spending limit) is a fatally over-broad response to that evil,” Rehnquist said.

“It is not limited to multimillion-dollar war chests; its terms apply equally to informal discussion groups that solicit neighborhood contributions to publicize their views about a particular presidential candidate,” he added.

Rehnquist was joined in the ruling by Chief Justice Warren E. Burger and Justices Harry A. Blackmun, Lewis F. Powell, Sandra Day O’Connor, William J. Brennan and John Paul Stevens.

Justices Byron R. White and Thurgood Marshall dissented.

$10 Million for Reagan

In 1980, conservative political action committees spent more than $10 million, mostly for advertising, in support of President Reagan. Total political committee spending in support of then-President Jimmy Carter’s reelection bid was less than $30,000.

The $1,000 spending limit was not enforced during the 1980 election because a three-judge federal court had struck it down as unconstitutional.

The spending limit was also left dormant during the 1984 election after the FEC passed up asking the Supreme Court for expedited consideration of the controversy.

The justices had agreed to decide the issue last April.

In another decision today, a Santa Monica, Calif., landlord who said the city is forcing him to remain in business against his will lost his appeal.

The justices, citing the lack of a federal question, let stand the city’s general ban on removal of rental properties by conversion or demolition.

Jerome J. Nash, who owns a six-unit apartment building, had challenged the city’s ban as a violation of his “constitutional right not to be forced unwillingly to continue in a given business.”