It's Time to End Citizens United
For over a decade now, the ultra-rich and corporations have used a pair of court rulings to skirt limits on individual political contributions by donating to super PACs.
On January 21, 2010 the Supreme Court’s ruled on a controversial decision that reversed century-old campaign finance restrictions and enabled corporations and other outside groups to spend unlimited funds on elections. The Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling opened the floodgates to massive increases in political spending from groups outside of the political campaigns and dramatically expanded the massive political influence of the ultra-rich, corporations, and special interest groups.
While these outside groups have had a significant influence on our elections for quite some time, the influence of gray money in politics has exploded since the Citizens United decision, and has resulted in an inordinate amount of undue influence on American democracy and the fight against political corruption. The impact of this can only be described as catastrophic.
In the 2010 Supreme Court' case, a conservative nonprofit group called Citizens United challenged campaign finance rules following a ruling by the Federal Election Commission (FEC) that stopped Citizens United from promoting and airing a film that criticized Hillary Clinton too close to the presidential primaries.
With the smallest of majorities, the Supreme Court sided (5 to 4) with Citizens United in 2010, ruling that corporations and other outside groups can spend unlimited money on elections. The Supreme Court's decision overturned election spending restrictions that dated back more than 100 years. This landmark ruling stood (and still stands) in apparent opposition to prior SCOTUS rulings that upheld certain spending restrictions, arguing that the government had a role in preventing corruption.
Then, on March 26, 2010 in a separate but related lower court case (SpeechNow v. Federal Election Commission) the DC Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the FEC had to allow organizations to register as “independent expenditure only committees,” a status that lets groups raise unlimited money from donors. SpeechNow is a nonprofit, unincorporated association organized as a section 527 entity under the Internal Revenue Code. The organization was formed by individuals who seek to pool their resources to make independent expenditures expressly advocating the election or defeat of federal candidates.
For over a decade now, the ultra-rich and corporations have used this pair of rulings to skirt individual limits by donating to these groups, which we now know as super PACs.
These “independent expenditure only committees" or super PAC's, as they are now referred to, are often staffed by former employees of the candidates. Super PAC's allow large (and ultra-rich) donors and corporations to exert undue influence over elections by avoiding individual contribution limits via these super PAC's. The end result is that the voices of regular voters have been drowned out by the super-rich and large corporations, who now have a level of access to (and influence over) our political process that’s impossible for the vast majority of Americans to obtain.
Voters should be fully informed about the specific details regarding wealthy special interests that are spending big money to influence our vote. In the absence of free and open disclosure of campaign contributions it is not only possible, but likely that our political system as a whole and our government, in general, can be “rigged” in the favor of large-money contributors. Every day that the Citizens United ruling remains a valid legal precedent, it continues to threaten that fundamental right.
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/10-years-super-pacs-show-courts-were-wrong-corruption-risks
https://campaignlegal.org/update/how-does-citizens-united-decision-still-affect-us-2022
https://www.fec.gov/legal-resources/court-cases/speechnoworg-v-fec/