McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission
Do the aggregate limits imposed by federal campaign finance law — which cap the total amount an individual may contribute to all federal candidates, political parties, and political action committees combined during a two-year election cycle — violate the First Amendment's protection of free speech?
The Decision
5-4 decision · Opinion by John G. Roberts Jr. · 2014
Majority Opinion— John G. Roberts Jr.concurring ↓dissent ↓
In a 5–4 decision announced on April 2, 2014, the Supreme Court struck down the aggregate contribution limits as unconstitutional under the First Amendment. The plurality opinion was authored by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and joined by Justices Scalia, Kennedy, and Alito, with Justice Thomas concurring in the judgment to provide the fifth vote.
Chief Justice Roberts' plurality opinion began by reaffirming that political contributions are protected under the First Amendment, though subject to a lower level of constitutional scrutiny than direct political speech. The opinion held that the only governmental interest strong enough to justify limits on political contributions is the prevention of quid pro quo corruption — that is, the direct exchange of money for official action — or its appearance. The plurality explicitly rejected the idea that the government could regulate contributions to combat a broader or more diffuse notion of corruption, such as general influence over or access to elected officials.
Applying this framework, the plurality concluded that aggregate limits do not meaningfully serve the anti-corruption interest. The base limits already prevent any individual from giving a corrupting amount to any single candidate. The aggregate limits do not add anything to this protection; they simply prevent a donor from giving the same permissible, base-limit contribution to additional candidates. Roberts wrote that 'the Government may no more restrict how many candidates or causes a donor may support than it may tell a newspaper how many candidates it may endorse.'
The plurality also addressed and rejected the government's circumvention argument — the theory that without aggregate limits, donors could route massive sums to particular candidates through transfers among party committees and contributions to joint fundraising vehicles. Roberts pointed to a series of existing legal safeguards that already guarded against such schemes: federal rules that treat earmarked contributions as direct gifts to the intended recipient, limits on how much money parties and PACs can transfer to candidates, and robust disclosure and reporting requirements that make large transfers visible. The plurality found it impermissible for the government to impose such a broad restriction on First Amendment rights based on speculative circumvention scenarios that existing law already addressed.
The decision did not disturb the base limits on contributions to individual candidates and committees, which remained in effect. It struck down only the aggregate caps, meaning that after the ruling, an individual could give the maximum base-limit contribution to as many candidates, party committees, and PACs as they wished, with no overall ceiling.
Concurring Opinions
Justice Clarence Thomas concurred in the judgment but wrote separately to argue that the Court should go much further. He would have overruled the framework established in Buckley v. Valeo altogether, subjecting all contribution limits — including the base limits — to strict scrutiny, which he believed they could not survive. In his view, contributions deserve the same robust First Amendment protection as direct political expenditures.
Dissenting Opinions
Stephen G. Breyerjoined by Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan
The dissent argued that the plurality adopted a dangerously narrow definition of corruption and ignored the real-world ways that aggregate limits serve as a critical safeguard against wealthy donors funneling enormous sums to individual candidates through networks of committees. Justice Breyer warned that the decision would open the door to a system in which a single donor could direct millions of dollars in a single election cycle, undermining the integrity of representative democracy.
- The First Amendment permits Congress to act against not only explicit quid pro quo bribery but also the broader corruption of democratic self-governance that occurs when enormous wealth translates directly into outsized political influence, a concept recognized in prior precedent.
- The plurality's reliance on existing safeguards like earmarking rules and transfer limits was misplaced because those rules are riddled with loopholes and are insufficient in practice to prevent the circumvention that aggregate limits were specifically designed to stop.
- Without aggregate limits, the dissent calculated that a single donor could contribute as much as $3.6 million in a single election cycle through joint fundraising committees and transfers — money that could be strategically directed to benefit specific candidates, creating precisely the kind of corruption risk Congress sought to prevent.
- The plurality's approach effectively overruled portions of Buckley v. Valeo that had sustained aggregate limits for nearly four decades, destabilizing a long-settled area of campaign finance law without adequate justification.
Background & Facts
Shaun McCutcheon was a conservative businessman and political activist from Alabama who wanted to support a large number of federal candidates and political committees with financial contributions. Under the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (commonly known as McCain-Feingold), federal law imposed two distinct types of contribution limits. First, there were 'base limits,' which capped how much a person could give to any single candidate or committee. Second, there were 'aggregate limits,' which capped the total amount a person could give to all candidates and committees combined over a two-year election cycle. For the 2013–2014 cycle, the aggregate limit was $123,200 — broken into a $48,600 sub-limit for contributions to candidates and a $74,600 sub-limit for contributions to political parties and PACs.
McCutcheon had no quarrel with the base limits. He was happy to give no more than the maximum allowed to any one candidate (then $2,600 per election). His problem was that he wanted to give that base-limit amount to more candidates and committees than the aggregate cap would permit. In other words, after contributing to a certain number of candidates, he hit the aggregate ceiling and was legally barred from supporting additional candidates — even at modest, base-limit amounts. He argued this restriction infringed on his First Amendment right to participate in the political process.
McCutcheon, joined by the Republican National Committee (RNC) as a co-plaintiff, filed a lawsuit against the Federal Election Commission (FEC) in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Because challenges to federal campaign finance statutes are heard by a special three-judge district court panel, the case was decided at that level. The three-judge panel dismissed the suit, concluding that the Supreme Court's 1976 decision in Buckley v. Valeo had already upheld aggregate contribution limits and that this precedent was controlling.
Because three-judge district court decisions in campaign finance cases are directly appealable to the Supreme Court, McCutcheon did not need to go through a court of appeals. The Supreme Court noted probable jurisdiction and agreed to hear the case, recognizing the significant constitutional questions at stake about the scope of permissible campaign finance regulation under the First Amendment.
The Arguments
The aggregate contribution limits violate the First Amendment because they prevent an individual from making constitutionally protected contributions to candidates and committees, even when each individual contribution falls within the permissible base limits. The government cannot justify restricting how many candidates or committees a citizen supports, as long as the amount given to each one is independently lawful.
- Political contributions are a form of protected political expression and association under the First Amendment, and any limit on them must be justified by a sufficiently important governmental interest.
- The aggregate limits do not prevent corruption of any individual candidate because the base limits already cap how much any one candidate can receive from a single donor — aggregate limits simply prevent a donor from supporting additional candidates at those already-permissible levels.
- Existing federal regulations — including rules against earmarking contributions, limits on transfers between committees, and extensive disclosure requirements — already serve as effective safeguards against any attempts to circumvent the base limits, making aggregate limits unnecessary and poorly tailored.
The aggregate limits are a necessary and constitutional tool to prevent corruption and the appearance of corruption. Without them, wealthy donors could use joint fundraising committees, transfers between party committees, and contributions to multiple PACs to effectively funnel enormous sums of money to a single candidate, circumventing the base limits.
- The Supreme Court in Buckley v. Valeo had already upheld aggregate contribution limits, and that precedent should be respected and followed.
- Without aggregate limits, a single wealthy donor could contribute millions of dollars in a single election cycle through a complex web of political committees that would ultimately direct the money to favored candidates, creating serious risks of quid pro quo corruption.
- Congress is entitled to deference when crafting prophylactic measures to prevent the circumvention of existing contribution limits, and aggregate limits serve as a critical backstop in the broader regulatory framework.