Justices Let Stand Rejection of Campaign Spending Limits

The Supreme Court, unswayed by concerns about the powerful influence of money in politics, is standing behind its landmark 1976 ruling that gave candidates a free-speech right to spend as much as they choose on their campaigns.

The justices refused Monday to hear Cincinnati’s defense of a 1995 city ordinance that would have limited candidates for the City Council to spending $140,000 on their campaigns, an amount equal to three times the salary for the job.

The city said that it wanted to free its elected officials from the pressure of fund-raising and to squelch the perception that the wealthy control city hall.

But the U.S. court of appeals there struck down the law in April, citing the Supreme Court’s Buckley vs. Valeo ruling in 1976.

A group advocating campaign reform, the Boston-based National Voting Rights Institute, took the case to the Supreme Court, hoping that the recent “explosion of campaign spending” would prompt the justices to reconsider the Buckley decision.

Along the way, lawyers for 26 states joined the appeal, saying that they wanted new authority to regulate campaign spending.

In a terse, one-line order, the justices dismissed the challenge without comment or a dissenting vote.

The Buckley decision has proved to be one of the court’s most enduring but derided precedents. It invalidated many of the campaign finance reforms enacted in the wake of the Watergate scandal. It also emerged as something of a compromise between the liberal and conservative factions of the high court.

On the one hand, the justices agreed that the government could limit how much money individuals could contribute to candidates to prevent the wealthy from having a controlling influence over politicians. The government had long had the authority to regulate elections to prevent “corruption or the appearance of corruption,” the court said.

On the other hand, the justices also said that candidates for office have a 1st Amendment right to spend as much as they choose to distribute leaflets, hire campaign workers or run ads on radio and television.

This apparent equation of money and speech has been roundly criticized by good-government reformers.

Among the justices, however, it remains a valid principle of 1st Amendment law.

In the past, they have been called upon to decide whether the 1st Amendment protects people who sell pornography, protesters who burn the flag and racists who use hate speech. In each instance, they have answered yes, although with apparent reluctance.

Campaign spending concerns a more laudable form of expression, at least by comparison. Politicians can air campaign ads proclaiming their intention to “get tough on crime” or to “protect Social Security.”

“The 1st Amendment affords the broadest protection to such political expression,” the court said in 1976 in explaining its ruling invalidating the spending limits. “A restriction on the amount a person or group can spend on political communication during a campaign necessarily reduces the quantity of expression. . . . This is because virtually every means of communicating ideas in today’s mass society requires the expenditure of money.”

This year, federal candidates spent at least $1.2 billion on their campaigns, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a record for a nonpresidential election year.

John C. Bonifaz, a Boston lawyer who worked on the Cincinnati appeal, said that he believes the court will revisit the issue someday.

“Obviously, we are disappointed. We still believe unlimited campaign spending represents a serious threat to our democratic process, but we recognize this is going to be a long fight,” he said.