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Thursday, January 21, 2010

Courts - This is the day for Citizens United v. FEC [Updated]

The SCOTUS is holding "a non-argument session to announce one or more opinions" at 10:00 AM. Follow it live at SCOTUSBlog.

[More] Adam Liptak writes in the NY Times:

The Supreme Court will hold a special session on Thursday, presumably to issue decisions. Such special sessions are unusual, leading many to suspect that the court will release its long-awaited decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, a major campaign finance case. The court has already taken the rare step of hearing arguments in the case twice. For the second argument, the court asked the parties to offer their views on whether it should overrule a 1990 decision that upheld restrictions on corporate spending to support or oppose political candidates, and part of the 2003 decision that upheld the central provisions of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law.
Here is the opinion, 183-page in total.

[Updated at 11:08 AM] "Supreme Court rolls back campaign spending limits" is the headline of this AP story by Mark Sherman. It begins:

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that corporations may spend as freely as they like to support or oppose candidates for president and Congress, easing decades-old limits on business efforts to influence federal campaigns.

By a 5-4 vote, the court overturned a 20-year-old ruling that said companies can be prohibited from using money from their general treasuries to produce and run their own campaign ads. The decision, which almost certainly will also allow labor unions to participate more freely in campaigns, threatens similar limits imposed by 24 states.

It leaves in place a prohibition on direct contributions to candidates from corporations and unions.

Critics of the stricter limits have argued that they amount to an unconstitutional restraint of free speech, and the court majority agreed.

"The censorship we now confront is vast in its reach," Justice Anthony Kennedy said in his majority opinion, joined by his four more conservative colleagues.

Strongly disagreeing, Justice John Paul Stevens said in his dissent, "The court's ruling threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions around the nation."

Joan Biskupic and Fredreka Schouten, now have this story, along with a timeline, at USA Today.

[More] "Free Speech v. Democracy: Rounding Up The Citizens United Reactions" from the WSJ Law Blog by Ashby Jones.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on January 21, 2010 09:14 AM
Posted to Courts in general