Political parties can now spend unlimited money supporting candidates, after Supreme Court overturns decades of precedent

AI Summary

The U.S. Supreme Court has overturned longstanding campaign finance restrictions, allowing political parties to spend unlimited money supporting candidates. This ruling signals a major shift in American political campaign financing potentially impacting corruption and democratic processes.

The U.S. Supreme Court has issued its latest ruling on campaign finance. Nora Carol Photography/Getty Images A decades-old law limiting how much money political parties can spend in coordination with candidates was struck down by the Supreme Court on June 30, 2026. Citing First Amendment principles, the court held in NRSC v. FEC that the limit unduly prevented political parties from “freely” and “fully” advocating for their respective nominees. The case marks the Roberts court’s latest chapter in a 20-year trajectory toward a more deregulated campaign finance system. While not the earth-shattering decision that was Citizens United, the 2010 ruling that struck down limits on corporate and union campaign spending as a violation of their free speech, NRSC v. FEC is still significant. And it has the potential to materially reshape the American political process going forward. Indeed, campaign finance regulation is a cornerstone of a healthy democracy. Some political theorists even contend that the private funding of campaigns is antithetical to core democratic principles of integrity, equality and responsiveness to voters. Campaign spending: Freedom or corruption? At a minimum, it is broadly agreed upon – and observed – that reining in money in politics is necessary to curb all-out corruption, where the wealthy are able to donate unlimited sums of money to politicians in exchange for favors. An example from the Federal Election Commission’s website of one form that must be filled out when a political party makes a campaign donation. Federal Election Commission The U.S. Supreme Court has historically upheld restrictions on political spending only if they furthered this anti-corruption goal – the idea being that fighting corruption is a compelling enough reason to limit political expression and association conducted via the dollar. Modern-day discussion of U.S. campaign finance revolves around issues such as dark money, outside-group spending and corporate personhood. Political party spending, by contrast, receives comparatively little attention from scholars, activists and the media. This asymmetry is not entirely without warrant. Political party spending used to dominate election cycles, with parties sometimes even outspending their own candidates. In 2000, for example, the Republican National Committee and Democratic National Committee combined spent more money on television ads supporting Texas Gov. George Bush and Vice President Al Gore than the candidates’ own campaigns did. Over the past two decades, however, political parties have played a waning role in elections. The advent of super PACs, political action committees that can receive and spend unlimited sums of money to support candidates, has led to a degree of outside-group spending – spending made without coordination with any candidate – that far surpasses that of political parties. Moreover, candidates’ growing reliance on small-dollar donations in the age of online fundraising has shifted their financial support base from their party to their individual followers. Political party spending nonetheless remains consequential in U.S. elections. In the 2024 election cycle, for instance, political parties spent over US$2.6 billion to support federal candidates – a substantial amount, even if modest compared with the $5.5 billion spent by federal candidates themselves and the whopping $15.5 billion spent by PACs and super PACs. The regulation of party spending is therefore a significant component of the U.S. campaign finance system. And its deregulation could unleash billions of dollars more in spending by parties in future elections. Quid pro quo risk? Federal campaign finance law regulates political parties in a variety of ways. Individuals are limited in how much money they can donate annually to political parties – $10,000 to state and local party committees and $44,300 to national party committees, as of 2025. Political parties are further prohibited from accepting money from corporations and unions for party-building purposes, known as “soft money.” Finally, prior to the NRSC v. FEC ruling, political parties were subject to limits on how much money they could spend to support a given candidate. This last restriction has faced the most challenges in court. NRSC v. FEC is not the first time the Supreme Court considered the legality of party expenditure limits. In the 1990s and early 2000s, the Supreme Court heard two such challenges, both brought by the Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee. In the first case, Colorado Republicans challenged a federal campaign finance provision that limited how much money political parties could independently spend to support candidates. The Supreme Court ultimately struck down the limits as a violation of parties’ First Amendment speech rights. The second challenge, meanwhile, targeted federal limits on party spending made directly in