Americans spend billions of dollars on clothing, cosmetics, housing, automobiles, vacations, restaurant dining, and so forth. Why, then, are so many bothered if people wish to contribute financially to political speech?
Of all our rights, one of the most precious is the ability to communicate our views about political philosophy and government. Insuring that others know of what we think and believe sometimes takes money – and a lot of it. Assuming that we, the people, know the source of spending in political speech, why should it be fettered?
Bradley Smith and Steve Simpson make the case that we should keep our political speech free.
The U.S. Supreme Court has long held that the government cannot limit what an individual spends to promote her political views, even if she tells people how to vote. It is common sense that groups of individuals should have the same rights. No one should have to sacrifice the First Amendment right to associate in order to exercise the First Amendment right to speak.
Imposing limits on groups such as SpeechNow.org ends up hurting the very people whom backers of campaign finance regulation always claim they’re trying to help — people of average means who must pool their resources to be heard — while leaving the field to the very wealthy to spend what they please.
Those are among the claims SpeechNow.org and its members made in a lawsuit filed this week in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. It challenges the constitutionality of requiring independent groups of citizens to register and organize as political committees. For the first time, federal courts will be asked to decide whether independent political speech by groups of individual American citizens has the full protection of the First Amendment.
Would a victory for SpeechNow.org allow groups of citizens to spend unlimited funds to influence the outcome of elections? Yes. And that is exactly why SpeechNow.org should prevail.
The First Amendment guarantees the right of citizens to urge political change, and elections present an ideal opportunity to affect policy by affecting the political futures of those who make it. That requires telling voters how they should vote.
A victory for SpeechNow.org would bring federal campaign finance laws into line with the constitutional principles of free speech and association, and bring them closer to the First Amendment that most Americans already believe we have.