Court Test Ahead for Campaign Donations : Law: Justices next month will weigh the constitutionality of limits to contributions. Case may have effect on push for finance reform in Congress.

A looming 1st Amendment fight before the Supreme Court could spell the end of most limits on campaign contributions, despite last week’s strong House vote in favor of new restrictions on money donated to political parties.

Twenty-three years ago, in the landmark Buckley vs. Valeo case, the court voided government limits on the other side of the political equation: campaign spending.

“The 1st Amendment affords the broadest protection to political expression,” the justices said then. “And in today’s mass society . . . virtually every means of communicating ideas requires the expenditure of money.”

Next month, for the first time since 1976, the justices will reconsider the constitutionality of contribution limits. But unlike in Congress, where campaign finance reform has steadily gained as a popular cause, the conservative-dominated Supreme Court has shown itself increasingly skeptical of official efforts to regulate the political process.

Last year, the court threw out state laws, including some in California, that required those who gather signatures for ballot initiatives to be registered voters. Two years before that, the justices freed the political parties from moves by federal regulators to limit how much they spend to boost their candidates. This is “core first Amendment activity,” the court said.

The case to be heard on Oct. 5 tests a Missouri law that limits the money donated to statewide candidates to $1,075 per election. The Buckley decision upheld a similar $1,000 limit on contributions to federal candidates from individuals.

Nonetheless, a federal appeals court in St. Louis struck down the state’s limit. A political novice who unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination for state auditor said that the restriction made it impossible for him to run a statewide campaign.

Agreeing, Judge Pasco Bowman, an influential conservative appointed by President Reagan, said that Missouri had unreasonably infringed on the free-speech rights of the candidate and his potential contributors.

Some legal scholars think that the case gives the more conservative Supreme Court an opportunity to free candidates from all government restrictions on fund-raising, including, eventually, current federal limits.

As a result, the drive in Congress for campaign finance reform may already be doomed.

The key provision in the House-passed bill and a pending Senate measure calls for a ban on so-called soft-money contributions--unlimited, often huge, gifts to the political parties from corporations, unions and individuals that are ostensibly for “party building” activities.

“This is an exercise in futility. The court will strike down these proposals if they become law, and the members of Congress know it,” said Roger Pilon, a constitutional expert at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank.

Decision Could Affect California Initiative

The outcome in the Missouri case also likely will determine the fate of a California ballot measure that puts a $500 limit on individual contributions to statewide candidates, such as the governor.

The state’s voters approved the limit as Proposition 208 in 1996. It was blocked, however, by a federal judge in Sacramento who said that the limit would “make it impossible for the ordinary candidate to mount an effective campaign for office.”

The state’s Fair Political Practices Commission has appealed the issue, but the final verdict on the constitutionality of Proposition 208 almost surely depends on how the Supreme Court rules in the Missouri case.

Since 1976, the court’s Buckley ruling has been derided by liberal reformers and editorial writers. The link between money and free speech has been called “silly” and “boneheaded” by columnists.

The justices have commented that a newspaper publisher would surely think it a 1st Amendment violation if state lawmakers tried to limit how much a paper could spend for its editorial staff or for circulating copies of its newspaper.

They also stressed that politics deserves the highest 1st Amendment protection. In recent years, the court has been called upon to decide whether flag burning, cross burning and pornography on the Internet deserve protection as free speech. In each instance, and sometimes with reluctance, the court majority has answered yes.

If commercial pornography is shielded from government regulation, they asked, how can the court not shield candidates who want to raise and spend money to tout their political views?

Still, it is by no means certain that the court will strike down the Missouri contribution limits.

Seen Serving Vital Public Interest

Jay Nixon, the state’s attorney general, joined by the Clinton administration, has said that the justices should stick with the Buckley decision and uphold the $1,000 limit. This restriction “only modestly and indirectly affects the constitutional right to speak” and it “serves the vital public interest in preventing corruption and the appearance of corruption,” the state attorney general has maintained in the case (Nixon vs. Shrink Missouri PAC, 98-963).

Donald J. Simon, acting president of Common Cause, a citizen lobbying group, said he believes that the publicity given to the abuses of soft money would make the justices wary of striking down the contribution limits. “I don’t expect them to affirm the 8th Circuit because it departed substantially from Buckley,” he said, referring to the federal appeals court in St. Louis. “The soft money system has been a disaster for public confidence in government. Access to the highest officials in the country is bartered in exchange for big soft-money contributions.”

Simon said he hopes that a high court decision endorsing Missouri’s contribution limits would give a boost to the drive for more reform.

The outcome is likely to turn on one or two votes. In the court’s last federal campaign spending case, decided in 1996, the four most conservative justices strongly endorsed a free-speech approach and voted to strike down the federal limits on parties. The four are Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy and Clarence Thomas.

At the liberal end of the spectrum, Justices John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg endorsed the federal restrictions on state party spending.