The Supreme Court agreed on June 30 to consider whether federal limits restricting political parties from coordinating spending with candidates violate the free-speech provisions of the First Amendment.

The court’s decision took the form of an unsigned order in National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) v. Federal Election Commission. No justices dissented. The court did not explain its decision.

At the same time, the court granted the Democratic National Committee’s request to participate in the appeal.

The petitioners are the NRSC, the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), Vice President JD Vance, and former Rep. Steve Chabot (R-Ohio).

“A political party exists to get its candidates elected. Yet Congress has severely restricted how much parties can spend on their own campaign advertising if done in cooperation with those very candidates,” states the petition filed on Dec. 4, 2024.

Limits on spending by party committees that’s coordinated with candidates were created on the theory that not having limits encourages corruption and allows wealthy donors to have outsized influence.

Congress enacted the Federal Election Campaign Act in 1972 to limit spending and fundraising in campaigns for federal political office. The law was amended in 1974 to include limits on how much political party committees may accept and spend to influence a federal election, the petition said.

Currently, the base limit for individual contributions to national party committees is $41,300 per year. The Act also limits how much those committees may give to federal candidates by imposing base limits. A committee may give $5,000 per election, but the limit rises to $57,800 when a committee and a Senate committee make a joint contribution. The Act also imposes a cap on “all party expenditures” for federal candidates, whether the spending is made with or without input from the candidate.

A divided U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled against the petitioners in September 2024, finding that the Supreme Court has not reversed a landmark 2001 decision affirming the limits, the petition said.

The appeals court determined that “coordinated party expenditure limits” are inconsistent with recent rulings on the First Amendment, but nevertheless upheld them because it found the issue is controlled by FEC v. Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee (2001).

Although in the years following this decision the Supreme Court “has tightened free speech restrictions on campaign finance regulation,” including on coordinated political advertising, any assessment of the validity of the restrictions should be made by the Supreme Court, not the Sixth Circuit, the appeals court ruled, according to the petition.

The petitioners urged the Supreme Court to take up the case, arguing that the current system is unfair.

It is natural for a political party to confer with a candidate before speaking in support of his campaign, and for almost 200 years of the United States’ existence, a party was allowed to do so, the petition said.

“Yet today, Congress has built a wall of separation between party and candidate, forcing party committees to figure out how to get their candidates elected without hearing from them,” the petition said.

“That is the campaign ‘equivalent of prohibiting communication between a coach and quarterback late in a tied game.’”

The Department of Justice, which represents the FEC, filed a brief on May 19 urging the Supreme Court to take up the appeal.

Although the Justice Department has a longstanding policy of defending federal statutes when they are challenged in court, “this is the rare case that warrants an exception to that general approach,” the brief said.

The campaign finance restriction here “violates core First Amendment rights,” and should be overturned, it said.

Current law restricts cooperation between a political party and a candidate, and the party expenditure limit interferes with the rights of both parties and candidates. The limit “is not narrowly tailored to serve the only interest that this Court has held can justify a campaign-finance restriction: preventing the reality or appearance of quid pro quo corruption,” the brief said.

Quid pro quo means something given or received in exchange for something else.

Because the department is unwilling to defend the Sixth Circuit decision, it asked the Supreme Court to appoint an amicus curiae, or friend of the court, to defend the ruling.

NRSC Chairman Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and NRCC Chairman Rep. Richard Hudson (R-N.C.) praised the nation’s highest court for accepting the case.

“The government should not restrict a party committee’s support for its own candidates,” they told The Epoch Times.

“These coordinated expenditure limits violate the First Amendment, and we appreciate the Court’s decision to hear our case.”

Department of Justice senior media affairs manager Natalie Baldassarre told The Epoch Times the department had no comment on the court’s decision to hear the appeal.

The Supreme Court is expected to hear the case in its new term that begins in October.

This article by Matthew Vadum appeared June 30, 2025, in The Epoch Times.