Citizens United Decision in Citizens

¶ … Citizens United Decision In Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. 310 (2010), the Supreme Court was asked to decide a critical question about campaign finance laws, specifically the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA). Under § 203 of the BCRA, corporations and unions were prohibited from funding an electioneering communication. Electioneering communications were those communications that mentioned a candidate and that were on broadcast, cable, or satellite within 60 days of a general election or 30 days of a primary.

The actual controversy in the case involved an effort by the nonprofit group Citizens United, which wanted to air a film criticizing Hillary Clinton. They wanted to advertise the film during television broadcasts. The Federal Election Commission prohibited this as a violation of § 203. Citizens United sought review of their decision. Eventually, the Supreme Court determined that the provisions of § 203 that prohibited corporations and unions from funding electioneering communications were unconstitutional. This marked a significant change in U.S.

election law as prior decisions had prohibited direct corporate contributions of the kind at issue in Citizens United. However, the case did not impact the legality of direct contributions from corporations or unions to candidate campaigns or political parties; those are still illegal in federal elections. Moreover, the Court upheld the sections of the BCRA that require the sponsors of election advertisements to disclose who made the message (See generally Citizens United, 588 U.S. 310 (2010)). Almost immediately, commentators, pundits, and even the general citizenry began to denounce the decision.

Up until this decision, the protections extended by the Bill of Rights had been considered personal rights that were extended to individual citizens. While groups may have previously been victorious in challenging laws that seemed to prohibit their right to speak as a group, those cases all hinged on the individual free speech interests involved in the case. However, Citizens United changed the free speech landscape in two specific ways.

First, it broadened the First Amendment's free speech protections significantly, equating corporations and other fictitious persons with actual people under the First Amendment and granting these fictitious people constitutional protections. Second, it equated money with speech, so that the right to spend money was considered the same as the right to issue speech. To many, this was equivalent to tacit approval by the Supreme Court for elections to be purchased. Not everyone was critical of the decision.

Senator Mitch McConnell, who was one of the parties who wanted the law deemed unconstitutional, believes that the Supreme Court's decision was the appropriate decision for the Supreme Court to make. In an article written with Floyd Abrams, the lawyer who represented McConnell in the dispute, he makes several salient points about why he believes the decision was the correct one.

First, they point out that the campaign laws had been criticized by a wide variety of special interest groups, which usually hold very diverse opinions about constitutional issues, including the ACLU, the NRA, the AFL-CIO, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (McConnell and Abrams, 2010). Second, they point out that political speech, which is exactly the same type of speech that has always received the highest degree of First Amendment protection, was the speech at issue in the underlying dispute. In many ways, McConnell and Abrams are correct.

The documentary in question was a highly critical piece with the clear goal of attempting to dissuade voters from voting for Hillary Clinton. Moreover, it was set to air during the 30 day time period prior to the primary. Finally, funding for the documentary was obtained, in part, from contributions from corporations. As a result, it clearly violated BCRA §203. However, they argue is that, regardless of the source of the speech, political speech is of such critical value to the population that it should always be protected (2010).

Moreover, while the documentary in question was produced by the right-wing of the political spectrum, they point out that BCRA § 203 had also limited speech on the left. Because corporations and unions are, essentially, groups of individual citizens, they believe the decision ultimately protected the individual right to free speech. However, criticisms of the decision seem to reflect the reality of the American public and political campaigns far more than praise of the decision. The average American voter is woefully uninformed and easily persuaded by advertising.

Therefore, campaign finance plays a critical role in modern elections. The candidate with the most money may not always win, but will be able to exercise a tremendous amount of influence and gain a much greater percentage of the voters than would have been possible without significant spending. Up until this point in time, there was a natural limit on that spending, as campaign contributions were limited to individuals. Now that unions and corporations can directly donate to campaigns, those natural limitations have been removed.

Fred Wertheimer's concern that "the decision will unleash unprecedented amounts of corporate 'influence seeking' money on our elections and create unprecedented opportunities for corporate 'influence-buying' corruption" may have seemed alarmist when he wrote it in 2010, but the last Presidential election and the tremendous amount of corporate money that went into that election demonstrated exactly that phenomenon (2010). People may wonder why corporate or union money would be a bad thing in an election.