When people want to join together to spend money in an election campaign, federal law requires them to form a “political action committee” or PAC. Most PACs are allowed to donate up to $5,000 to any candidate in an election. If a PAC has been registered for less than six months, however, this maximum donation is inexplicably lowered to $2,700 per candidate.
Since the 1974 case of Buckley v. Valeo, the Supreme Court has consistently held that limitations on campaign contributions “implicate fundamental First Amendment interests.” And only two years ago, in McCutcheon v. FEC, the Court reiterated that such limits could only be justified if they reduce quid pro quo corruption (or its appearance). By that standard, the $2,700 limit on new PACs is clearly unconstitutional: If a $5,000 donation from a seven-month-old PAC does not run the risk of corruption, it’s hard to see how a $2,701 donation from a five-month-old PAC does. Making just this argument, a new PAC – the colorfully titled Stop Reckless Economic Instability Caused by Democrats (Stop REID) – sued the Federal Election Commission.
There was just one problem: Although this plaintiff PAC was less than six months old when the case was filed, it was more than six months old when the district court ruled. For that reason, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit held that it could not rule on the constitutionality of the $2,700 limit because the question had become “moot”; the limit no longer applied to the particular PAC that had brought the case.
Read more at https://www.cato.org/blog/government-shouldnt-get-do-unconstitutional-things-only-doing-them-short-periods-time
No comments:
Post a Comment