Supreme Court to Review Rules on Election Spending

The Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to reconsider the free-speech rule that allows candidates to spend unlimited amounts of money to win election to public office.

The campaign finance case is among 11 the justices agreed to take up during their upcoming term. They had met behind closed doors Monday to go over more than 1,700 appeals that had awaited action since June.

The campaign spending case from Vermont could change the look of American politics.

Nearly 30 years ago, the high court set a confusing two-part rule for campaigns: The government may limit how much money donors give to candidates, but it may not limit how much the candidates spend.

Ever since, campaign reformers in Congress and around the nation have focused on limiting contributions. For example, under the McCain-Feingold Act, individuals may give no more than $2,000 to a federal candidate in an election year.

But there are no limits on how much money the candidates can raise and spend. Recent decades have seen a steady increase in election spending as well as a profusion of wealthy candidates who fund their own campaigns. Billionaires such as Ross Perot and publishing heir Steve Forbes could run for president because they had plenty of money, giving rise to charges that some candidates could “buy” political office.

In the last decade, reformers have pressed for new limits on state and local campaigns. They argue that contribution limits have failed because candidates simply spend more time raising money from more donors.

“This case is about law catching up with political reality,” said Brenda Wright, managing attorney for the National Voting Rights Institute in Boston, which is defending spending limits set by the Vermont Legislature.

In 1997, that Legislature, at the urging of then-Gov. Howard Dean, set a series of strict limits on donations and spending. Gubernatorial candidates and their parties could spend only $300,000 in the two years before the election. Candidates for the state Senate and for county offices were limited to $4,000.

California and other states considered proposals in the 1990s, including ballot measures, that would set campaign spending limits, but critics said these limits would be struck down as free-speech violations under the Supreme Court’s 1976 decision in Buckley vs. Valeo. That ruling set the two-part rule.

But last year, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Manhattan upheld Vermont’s law as a reasonable reform. Earlier this year, the American Civil Liberties Union appealed the issue to the Supreme Court, arguing that “Vermont’s mandatory limits on candidate expenditures violate the 1st Amendment.”

The case, Randall vs. Sorrell, will be heard early next year. Judging from past cases involving campaign spending reform, the outcome may depend on who replaces Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. She has sided with the four liberal justices in supporting limits on campaign donations.

If O’Connor were to remain on the court, Vermont’s spending limits would stand a good chance of being upheld. But she will step down as soon as the Senate confirms a replacement nominated by President Bush.

Meanwhile, the eight associate justices, awaiting the expected confirmation this week of Judge John G. Roberts Jr. as chief justice, also said they would consider backtracking a bit on the McCain-Feingold Act and allowing “grass-roots lobbying groups” to run broadcast ads before elections.

One provision of the McCain-Feingold Act bars groups from using corporate or union money for broadcasts that mention a candidate in the 60 days before an election. The high court upheld that ban.

But lawyers for small, incorporated nonprofit organizations such as antiabortion groups or the ACLU said they should not have to abide by that ban because they were not moneymaking corporations.

The justices said Tuesday that they would hear the case of Wisconsin Right to Life vs. Federal Election Commission to decide whether nonprofit groups had a free-speech right to run broadcast ads despite the general ban.