Parties: McCONNELL, UNITED STATES SENATOR, ET AL. v. FEDERAL ELECTION COMMISSION ET AL.
Date: 2003-12-10
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Paragraph: 365 - Another proposition which could explain at least some of the results of today's opinion is that the First Amendment right to spend money for speech does not include the right to combine with others in spending money for speech. Such a proposition fits uncomfortably with the concluding words of our Declaration of Independence: N11* And for the support of this Declaration, . . . we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor." (Emphasis added.) The freedom to associate with others for the dissemination of ideas — not just by singing or speaking in unison, but by pooling financial resources for expressive purposes — is part of the freedom of speech.
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Paragraph: 256 - We repeatedly have struck down limitations on expenditures "made totally independently of the candidate and his campaign," Buckley, 424 U.S., at 47, on the ground that such limitations "impose far greater restraints on the freedom of speech and association" than do limits on contributions and coordinated expenditures, id., at 44, while "fail[ing] to serve any substantial governmental interest in stemming the reality or appearance of corruption in the electoral process," id., at 47-48.
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Paragraph: 349 - This is a sad day for the freedom of speech. Who could have imagined that the same Court which, within the past four years, has sternly disapproved of restrictions upon such inconsequential forms of expression as virtual child pornography, Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, 535 U.S. 234 (2002), tobacco advertising, Lorillard Tobacco Co. v. Reilly, 533 U.S. 525 (2001), dissemination of illegally intercepted communications, Bartnicki v. Vopper, 532 U.S. 514 (2001), and sexually explicit cable programming, United States v. Playboy Entertainment Group, Inc., 529 U.S. 803 (2000), would smile with favor upon a law that cuts to the heart of what the First Amendment is meant to protect: the right to criticize the government.
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Paragraph: 367 - The First Amendment protects political association as well as political expression. The constitutional right of association explicated in NAACP v. Alabama, 357 U.S. 449, 460 (1958), stemmed from the Court's recognition that N213* `[e]ffective advocacy of both public and private points of view, particularly controversial ones, is undeniably enhanced by group association.'
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Paragraph: 590 - The First Amendment protects the right of all organizations, not just a subset of them, to engage in political speech. See Austin, 494 U.S., at 700-701 (KENNEDY, J., dissenting) (N215* "The First Amendment does not permit courts to exercise speech suppression authority denied to legislatures").
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Paragraph: 354 - N274* money enables speech by proxyThat proposition has been endorsed by one of the two authors of today's principal opinion: N275* The right to use one's own money to hire gladiators, [and] to fund `speech by proxy,' . . . [are] property rights . . . not entitled to the same protection as the right to say what one pleases." Nixon v. Shrink Missouri Government PAC, 528 U.S. 377, 399 (2000) (STEVENS, J., concurring). Until today, however, that view has been categorically rejected by our jurisprudence. As we said in Buckley, 424 U.S., at 16, N276* "this Court has never suggested that the dependence of a communication on the expenditure of money operates itself to introduce a nonspeech element or to reduce the exacting scrutiny required by the First Amendment."
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Paragraph: 356 - financial transactionsmoney enables speech by proxyDivision of labor requires a means of mediating exchange, and in a commercial society, that means is supplied by money. The publisher pays the author for the right to sell his book; it pays its staff who print and assemble the book; it demands payments from booksellers who bring the book to market. This, too, presents opportunities for repression: Instead of regulating the various parties to the enterprise individually, the government can suppress their ability to coordinate by regulating their use of money. What good is the right to print books without a right to buy works from authors? Or the right to publish newspapers without the right to pay deliverymen?The right to speak would be largely ineffective if it did not include the right to engage in financial transactions that are the incidents of its exercise.
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Paragraph: 580 - N277* We are supposed to find comfort in the knowledge that the ad is banned under § 203 only if it "is targeted to the relevant electorate," defined as communications that can be received by 50,000 or more persons in the candidate's district. See 2 U.S.C.A. § 434(f)(3)(C) (Supp. 2003). This Orwellian criterion, however, is analogous to a law, unconstitutional under any known First Amendment theory, that would allow a speaker to say anything he chooses, so long as his intended audience could not hear him. See Kleindienst v. Mandel, 408 U.S. 753, 762-765 (1972) (discussing the "First Amendment right to receive information and ideas" (internal quotation marks omitted)). A central purpose of issue ads is to urge the public to pay close attention to the candidate's platform on the featured issues. By banning broadcast in the very district where the candidate is standing for election, § 203 shields information at the heart of the First Amendment from precisely those citizens who most value the right to make a responsible judgment at the voting booth.
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Paragraph: 357 - This is not to say that any regulation of money is a regulation of speech. The government may apply general commercial regulations to those who use money for speech if it applies them evenhandedly to those who use money for other purposes. But where the government singles out money used to fund speech as its legislative object, it is acting against speech as such, no less than if it had targeted the paper on which a book was printed or the trucks that deliver it to the bookstore.
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Paragraph: 373 - N112* The First Amendment does not in my view permit the restriction of that political speech. And the same holds true for corporate electoral speech: A candidate should not be insulated from the most effective speech that the major participants in the economy and major incorporated interest groups can generate.
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Phrase match: that political speech. And the same
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Paragraph: 407 - Indeed, this Court has explicitly recognized that N113* "the interest in having anonymous works enter the marketplace of ideas unquestionably outweighs any public interest in requiring disclosure as a condition of entry," and thus that "an author's decision to remain anonymous . . . is an aspect of the freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment."
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Paragraph: 372 - In NAACP v. Button, supra, at 428-429, 431, we held that the NAACP could assert First Amendment rights "on its own behalf, . . . though a corporation," and that the activities of the corporation were "modes of expression and association protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments." In Pacific Gas & Elec. Co. v. Public Util. Comm'n of Cal., 475 U.S. 1, 8 (1986), we held unconstitutional a state effort to compel corporate speech. "The identity of the speaker," we said, "is not decisive in determining whether speech is protected. Corporations and other associations, like individuals, contribute to the `discussion, debate, and the dissemination of information and ideas' that the First Amendment seeks to foster."
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Paragraph: 284 - Limitations on the amount that an individual may contribute to a candidate or political committee impinge on the protected freedoms of expression and association. See Buckley, supra, at 20-22. When the Government burdens the right to contribute, we apply heightened scrutiny. See ante, at 136 (joint opinion of STEVENS and O'CONNOR, JJ.) ("[A] contribution limit involving even "`significant interference"' with associational rights is nevertheless valid if it satisfies the `lesser demand' of being `"closely drawn"' to match a `"sufficiently important interest"'" (quoting Federal Election Comm'n v. Beaumont, 539 U.S. 146, 162 (2003)).
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Paragraph: 372 - In NAACP v. Button, supra, at 428-429, 431, we held that the NAACP could assert First Amendment rights N269* "on its own behalf, . . . though a corporation," and that the activities of the corporation were N270* "modes of expression and association protected by the First and Fourteenth Amendments." In Pacific Gas & Elec. Co. v. Public Util. Comm'n of Cal., 475 U.S. 1, 8 (1986), we held unconstitutional a state effort to compel corporate speech. N271* "The identity of the speaker," we said, "is not decisive in determining whether speech is protected. Corporations and other associations, like individuals, contribute to the N272* `discussion, debate, and the dissemination of information and ideas' that the First Amendment seeks to foster."
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Paragraph: 407 - The N273* "historical evidence indicates that Founding-era Americans opposed attempts to require that anonymous authors reveal their identities on the ground that forced disclosure violated the `freedom of the press.'" McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Comm'n, 514 U. S. 334, 361 (1995) (THOMAS, J., concurring in judgment). Indeed, this Court has explicitly recognized that N274* "the interest in having anonymous works enter the marketplace of ideas unquestionably outweighs any public interest in requiring disclosure as a condition of entry," and thus that "an author's decision to remain anonymous . . . is an aspect of the freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment." Id., at 342. The Court now backs away from this principle, allowing the established right to anonymous speech to be stripped away based on the flimsiest of justifications.
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Paragraph: 420 - Second, it is far from bizarre to suggest that (potentially regulable) speech that is in practice impossible to differentiate from fully protected speech must be fully protected. It is, rather, part and parcel of First Amendment first principles. See, e. g., Free Speech Coalition, 535 U. S., at 255 N275* ("The Government may not suppress lawful speech as the means to suppress unlawful speech. Protected speech does not become unprotected merely because it resembles the latter. The Constitution requires the reverse"). In fact, First Amendment protection was extended to that fundamental category of artistic and entertaining speech not for its own sake, but only because it was indistinguishable, practically, from speech intended to inform. See Joseph Burstyn, Inc. v. Wilson, 343 U. S. 495, 501 (1952); Winters v. New York, 333 U. S. 507, 510 (1948) (rejecting suggestion that "the constitutional protection for a free press applies only to the exposition of ideas" as the "line between the informing and the entertaining is too elusive for the protection of that basic right," noting that "[w]hat is one man's amusement, teaches another's doctrine"). This principle clearly played a significant role in Buckley itself, see 424 U. S., at 42 (after noting that "the distinction between discussion of issues and candidates and advocacy of election or defeat of candidates may often dissolve in practical application," holding that the "express advocacy" standard must be adopted as the interpretation of the relevant language in FECA). The express-advocacy line was drawn to ensure the protection of the "discussion of issues and candidates," not out of some strange obsession of the Court to create meaningless lines. And the joint opinion misses the point when it notes that "Buckley's express advocacy line, in short, has not aided the legislative effort to combat real or apparent corruption." Ante, at 193-194. Buckley did not draw this line solely to aid in combating real or apparent corruption, but rather also to ensure the protection of speech unrelated to election campaigns.
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Paragraph: 547 - The Government and the majority are right about one thing: The express-advocacy requirement, with its list of magic words, is easy to circumvent. The Government seizes on this observation to defend BCRA § 203, arguing it will prevent what it calls "sham issue ads" that are really to the same effect as their more express counterparts. Ante, at 185, 193-194. What the Court and the Government call sham, however, are the ads speakers find most effective. Unlike express ads that leave nothing to the imagination, the record shows that issue ads are preferred by almost all candidates, even though politicians, unlike corporations, can lawfully broadcast express ads if they so choose. It is a measure of the Government's disdain for protected speech that it would label as a sham the mode of communication sophisticated speakers choose because it is the most powerful.
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