Citizens United v. FEC definition
The 2010 Citizens United ruling removed limits on independent political spending by corporations and labor unions.
Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (FEC) is a 2010 Supreme Court case that struck down federal limits on independent expenditures by corporations and labor unions. An independent expenditure is money spent on ads or other messages that support or oppose a candidate, without coordination with that candidate's campaign.
A nonprofit, Citizens United, made a film about Hillary Clinton in 2008 while she was running for president. It wanted to put the film on cable on-demand right before the primaries.
Federal law barred corporations from paying for campaign ads that close to an election. Citizens United said the movie was journalism, not a campaign ad. The FEC said it was a campaign ad. Citizens United sued rather than risk civil and criminal penalties.
The Supreme Court could have answered the narrow question: does this one movie violate campaign finance law? It didn't. Instead, it threw out the whole rule, saying political spending is speech and the government cannot stop a corporation or a union from spending its own money to support or oppose a candidate.
What did Citizens United v. FEC do?
Before the ruling, federal law banned a corporation or labor union from spending its own money on a message urging people to vote for or against a federal candidate. The ban also covered ads that named a candidate within 30 days of a primary or 60 days of a general election. A corporation or union could back candidates only through a separate political action committee (PAC), paid for by voluntary donations from employees or members and held in its own bank account.
After the ruling, a corporation or labor union can pay for political ads with its own money. The law calls that spending an independent expenditure, meaning the group cannot coordinate with the candidate's campaign, and the FEC says independent expenditures are not subject to limits.
Two rules didn’t change. A corporation still can’t give money straight to a federal candidate, and political ads still have to say who paid for them.
Who won Citizens United v. FEC?
Citizens United won on January 21, 2010. Five of the nine justices joined the part of the ruling that struck down the ban on corporate and union election spending.
Eight of the nine justices joined a separate part of the ruling, which upheld the requirements that political advertisers say who paid for an ad and report their spending to the FEC.
Did Citizens United create super PACs?
Super PACs came from a second court case, decided two months later. On March 26, 2010, the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit ruled in SpeechNow.org v. FEC that donations to groups making only independent expenditures cannot corrupt a candidate, citing Citizens United.
That decision removed the cap on how much a person could give to a group that spends only on independent expenditures. The FEC calls those groups “independent expenditure-only political committees,” also known as super PACs. They may accept unlimited contributions from individuals, corporations, labor unions, and other PACs.
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