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- The Supreme Court removed limits on political party spending with candidates.
- The decision follows a Republican-led lawsuit including Vice President JD Vance.
- Justice Sotomayor dissented while Justice Alito defended the decision's impact on fairness.
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Tuesday erased limits on how much political parties can spend in coordination with candidates for Congress and president, striking down a federal election law that is more than 50 years old.
Prodded by a Republican-led lawsuit that includes Vice President JD Vance, the court's conservative justices were again in the majority of the latest decision that upended congressionally enacted limits on raising and spending money to influence elections. The court's 2010 Citizens United decision opened the door to unlimited independent spending in federal elections.
The limits on party spending stem from a desire to prevent large donors from circumventing caps on individual contributions to a candidate by directing unlimited sums to the party, with the understanding that the money will be spent on the candidate's behalf.
The Supreme Court had previously upheld the limits in 2001.
The Republican committees for House and Senate candidates filed the lawsuit in Ohio in 2022, joined by Vance, then a senator from Ohio, and then-Rep. Steve Chabot.
After President Donald Trump took office for his second term, the Federal Election Commission dropped its defense of the law and joined Republicans in urging its repeal.
Democrats had called on the court to uphold the law, even though there is wide agreement that the spending limits have hurt political parties in an era of unlimited spending by other organizations.
Last year, the coordinated party spending for Senate races ranged from $127,200 in several states with small populations to nearly $4 million in California, the most populous state. For House races, the limits were $127,200 in states with only one representative and $63,600 everywhere else.
Entrenched divisions between liberal and conservative justices over campaign finance restrictions were on display when the court heard arguments in December.
"Every time we interfere with the congressional design, we make matters worse," said Justice Sonia Sotomayor, a dissenter in Citizens United and the court's other campaign money cases.
By contrast, Justice Samuel Alito, a member of the Citizens United majority, described the decision as "much maligned, I think unfairly maligned." The effect of the decision was to "level the playing field," Alito said, by expanding the right to spend freely that had previously belonged only to media companies.
