The Supreme Court Restores Some Com­mon Sense To Cam­paign Finance

The Supreme Court got this one right. In Nation­al Repub­li­can Sen­a­to­r­i­al Com­mit­tee v. Fed­er­al Elec­tion Com­mis­sion, decid­ed today, the court struck down the fed­er­al lim­its on coor­di­nat­ed expen­di­tures between polit­i­cal par­ties and their can­di­dates. The vote was 6–3, with Jus­tice Kavanaugh writ­ing for the major­i­ty, joined by Chief Jus­tice Roberts and Jus­tices Thomas, Ali­to, Gor­such, and Bar­rett. For decades, these restric­tions rest­ed on a bizarre fic­tion, that a polit­i­cal par­ty could some­how cor­rupt the very can­di­date it nom­i­nate …