Vice-presidential candidate Sen. J. D. Vance (R-OH) and other Republicans are spearheading a lawsuit aiming to prompt the Supreme Court to move beyond its landmark Citizens United decision and tear down some of the last remaining rules designed to prevent megadonors’ money from influencing public officials. What’s more, Vance has ties to one of the appeals judges who agreed with the effort and just helped tee up the case for Supreme Court consideration.
If the Supreme Court ends up hearing Vance’s new case, it would give the additional three President Donald Trump–appointed judges who were not on the court during Citizens United an opportunity to go even further than that landmark decision — an outcome hinted at by Justice Clarence Thomas in his Citizens United concurring opinion saying the ruling didn’t go far enough.
Experts say Vance’s lawsuit, as well as a new regulatory decision allowing a candidate to work hand in hand with a deep-pocketed outside election group, is part of a coordinated effort, decades in the making, to destroy the last vestiges of campaign finance laws designed to prevent the wealthy and the powerful from spending limitless amounts directly on candidates and demanding favors in return.
In 2010, the Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission used a relatively esoteric and narrow campaign finance dispute to issue a sweeping precedent removing restrictions on independent election expenditures as long as they were “not coordinated with a candidate.” The decision gave rise to “independent-expenditure-only committees,” or super PACs, which are political action groups that can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money on political campaigns, so long as they do not directly…
La suite est à lire sur: jacobin.com
Auteur: Freddy Brewster
