The Supreme Court Won’t Hear “Citizens United on Steroids” Case

The United States Supreme Court.<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/brendel/2677168754/">S.E.B.</a>/Flickr

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


That whooshing sound you just heard was campaign finance reformers breathing a deep sigh of relief. On Monday morning, the Supreme Court declined to take up a lawsuit named Danielczyk v. United States, a challenge to one of the oldest laws in campaign politics: the ban on direct corporate contributions to candidates.

The case stems from donations that two Virginia businessmen, William Danielczyk and Eugene Biagi, made to Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign. Danielczyk and Biagi gave to Clinton’s campaign under the impression that they would be reimbursed by the private equity firm that employed them. Instead Danielczyk and Biagi were prosecuted by the Department of Justice for violating the century-old ban on corporate contributions. They responded by fighting to dismiss the charges. Their attorneys argued that the Supreme Court’s logic in the Citizens United case—that independent expenditures do not corrupt or create the appearance of corruption—applied to donations directly to candidates. Thus the ban on corporate donations, they argued, was unconstitutional. In 2011, a federal district court agreed with Danielczyk’s lawyers and dismissed the charges, but the case was later reversed on appeal.

When Danielczyk reached the Supreme Court, supporters of tougher campaign finance laws feared that the court might go even further than Citizens United by demolishing the ban on direct corporate donations, one of the last remaining pillars of campaign finance law in US. They had reason to worry: Last week, the high court agreed to the hear the McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, another troublesome case in the eyes of the reformers. McCutcheon challenges the overall cap on what donors can give to candidates, parties, and political action committees, currently set at $46,200 to federal candidates and $70,800 to parties and PACs over a two-year election cycle. That limit is nearly 40 years old, dating back to the post-Watergate era, and if it falls, the reformers fear that future challenges to, say, the limit on donating to a candidate (now at $2,600 a year) could fall, too.

The Supreme Court could, sometime down the road, reconsider the corporate donation ban. But for now, the reformers have received a small bit of good news at an otherwise bleak point in the political money wars.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate