Name: Supreme Court weighs future of party spending in federal elections
Uploaded: 2025-12-10T00:21:04.603Z
Duration: 4 min 20 s
Description: The Supreme Court heard arguments Tuesday over the long-standing legal limits on the amount of money political parties can spend in coordination with candidates. CBS News chief legal correspondent Jan Crawford has more.

The Supreme Court heard arguments Tuesday over the long-standing legal limits on the amount of money political parties can spend in coordination with candidates. CBS News chief legal correspondent Jan Crawford has more.

Washington

The U.S. Supreme Court is reviewing a case that questions the legality of limits on coordinated spending between political parties and federal candidates. These regulations, originating from the post-Watergate era, are defended by Democrats as necessary to prevent circumvention of direct contribution limits, while Republicans argue they violate First Amendment rights and are rendered ineffective by the existence of super PACs.

The case has divided the court along ideological lines, with liberal justices supporting the current rules and conservatives suggesting that removing the limits could strengthen political parties. There is also a possibility the Court may avoid a substantive ruling by questioning whether the challenger, Vice President J.D. Vance, has standing, which would leave existing regulations unchanged for the upcoming election cycle.

Supreme Court weighs future of party spending in federal elections

So, it appears that we are entering a very definitive post-Watergate attitude about campaign financing in America. There was another example of that today. We've been moving in that direction for many, many years, but there was another example of it today. Supreme Court weighing a case that would, again, chip away at some of those campaign finance restrictions that basically grew out of that Watergate era. I heard arguments today over longstanding, but now challenged, legal limits on the amount of money political parties can spend in coordination with federal candidates. The case was brought in 2022 by Republicans, including Vice President J.D. Vance, who was running for the Senate seat in Ohio at the time. They claimed, and still do, that current restrictions violate the First Amendment. I'm very happy to say that CBS News chief legal correspondent Jan Crawford is right by my side to explain the case. It's cold outside. It's really good to be here. Yes. It's so much better to have you here. What were the arguments? And what's the trajectory of this case? Well, I mean, like you point out, I mean, this is just one—in a line of cases we've seen going back 15, almost 20 years now, where the courts, you know, gradually opened up politics to more and more money. And this one is yet another example. The Democrats here are defending this regulation. It essentially prohibits and limits political parties from spending in coordination with candidates. And why is that important? Well, Democrats say that if we didn't have that regulation, people would just do an end run around this other law that prohibits you from directly giving to candidates. That puts limits on how much you can directly give to a candidate. Right. $7,000 this year in a cycle, the primary in general. You can give hundreds of thousands of dollars to political parties. Right. And so, if you can coordinate, then you just go right around that. You can just give it to the party, and then they funnel it to the candidate. This is the argument. Right. And then you can curry favor with the candidates, and that leads to corruption, so on and so on. So, that was their argument, defending this regulation. Republicans who are challenging it say that is just ridiculous, because guess what? You can give unlimited amounts to these super PACs. And that's what people are doing. I mean, you can give a billion dollars to them. There are no limits. And so, it's ridiculous, they say, to suggest that anyone's going to be funneling money, doing an end run around, you know, these limits, when you can just give it to a super PAC. And technically, the super PACs are not legally permitted to coordinate with candidates, but they are getting closer and closer. But they support the candidates. But they are— Absolutely. Yes. And those lines are getting blurrier and blurrier each election cycle. Yes, they are, actually. And so, Republicans are saying this violates the First Amendment. You know, there's no corruption evident here. This is pointless, and we should be able to do this. And the evolution of the conservative majority on the court has basically been, if I understand it, Jan, that the First Amendment and free speech and more political speech, even if it's funded at unlimited or nearly unlimited levels, is better than restricting political speech and— Sending it underground. Sending it underground. Yes, exactly. So, in court today—so, those are our arguments on this case. And, you know, not surprising, I think, when we see a lot of these big cases. We talked about one yesterday. It's divided between the conservatives and liberals. We have a united liberal wall defending this regulation, just as Sonia Sotomayor, very vocal, suggesting that, you know, the court needs to just leave this alone, let this regulation remain. And every time the court gets involved in tinkering with campaign finance regulations, they just make it worse, which there is some truth to that. The conservatives, though? Well, the conservatives were saying, like, well, there is a problem. We agree that political parties now, because of these super PACs and everything else have gotten so powerful, that that's really weakened the political parties. And so, this regulation, removing it, maybe that would help reestablish political parties, which have taken a hit, because these super PACs. Justice Brett Kavanaugh went back to that multiple times. Is it going to be 6-3, though? This one was kind of hard to read, because there's another issue out there. They could punt this case. There's a question, and that came up, too. Is J.D. Vance the appropriate person to be challenging this regulation? Maybe not. And so, then we would have a punt, and it would just stay business as usual for this next cycle. Wow. We might find ourselves in campaign finance punt formation. Jan Crawford, thank you so very much.

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