The Citizen’s United Era of Money in Politics: Explained
via Vox
On January 21, 2010, the Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. FEC ruling set the stage for larger and larger sums of money to pour into our electoral system. In the ruling, a majority of justices made clear that they viewed outside spending on election ads as free speech that didn’t present any serious danger of corruption.
The specifics of the case at issue, involving a film an outside group made about Hillary Clinton, are less important than its broader implications. Essentially, the justices cemented a distinction between donations to candidates and parties — which can be capped — and money spent independently by outside entities (individuals, nonprofits, unions, and corporations) — which can’t.
For decades, Supreme Court majorities have viewed spending on elections as a form of free speech. But they’ve also argued that certain restrictions on such spending were acceptable because the government has an interest in preventing corruption or the appearance of corruption. So, limits of how much money any one donor could give to any one politician’s campaign were allowed to stand, because, the justices argued, big payoffs from a donor to a politician could be, or look, corrupt.
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