Matt Shinners
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday in National Republican Senatorial Committee v. FEC that limits on how much political parties can spend in direct coordination with their own candidates violate the First Amendment.
In a 6-3 decision authored by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the court struck down a federal cap that had governed coordinated spending between candidates and their parties since the post-Watergate reforms of the 1970s. This ruling overturns a 2001 precedent set in FEC v. Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee upholding these limits that have been in place for over 50 years.
The Sixth Circuit initially upheld the caps, citing the binding 2001 precedent, but it flagged the limits as out of step with the Supreme Court's newer campaign finance doctrine. The Supreme Court agreed to take a second look, using this case to overturn the limits and further push the United States in the direction of unlimited (and unprecedented) campaign spending.
What Changes
To understand the changes, it’s important to understand the general state of play. It’s easy to get lost in a sea of PACs, Party Committees, and candidates.
In general, you can think of political spending as falling into one of two buckets. The first is coordinated spending: Money spent by a group that is in contact with a candidate for office, and so they spend money in ways that the candidate thinks will help her the most. The second is independent expenditures—money spent by an outside group without direct contact with the candidate.
So, the former type of expenditure is more valuable dollar-for-dollar because the candidate can help direct its spending, while the unlimited spending opened by Citizens United through super PACs must be independent. However, though that money is less “efficient,” there’s a whole lot more of it.
Now, however, the Supreme Court has ruled that political party committees can spend as much money as they want in coordination with candidates (though limits on how much an individual can contribute to a party committee still stand…for now).
The Post-Watergate Throughline
The coordinated spending limit wasn't a stray regulation—it was a piece of the architecture Congress built after Watergate to keep concentrated money out of the wiring of individual campaigns. The Federal Election Campaign Act, amended substantially in 1974 in direct response to the Nixon-era money scandals, created the modern framework of contribution limits, disclosure requirements, and the FEC itself.
The Supreme Court's 1976 ruling in Buckley v. Valeo upheld contribution limits as a corruption check while striking down spending limits as a speech restriction—a distinction that has shaped, and been steadily eroded by, every major campaign finance case since.
That erosion has been a fairly direct line: Citizens United v. FEC in 2010 allowed corporations to spend unlimited sums in candidate elections as long as the expenditures were independent of the campaigns; the Court eliminated aggregate contribution limits in 2014; and in 2022's FEC v. Ted Cruz for Senate, the Court struck down a cap on using post-election funds to repay candidate loans.
Tuesday's ruling in NRSC v. FEC removes the coordinated-spending cap that was one of the last structural levers Congress had left to prevent large donors from routing money around individual contribution limits by funneling it through party committees instead.
Justice Kavanaugh framed the limits as actively counterproductive to party strength, writing that keeping them in place would "help consign political parties to continued second-tier status as compared to outside groups." Justice Kavanaugh, please don’t threaten us with a good time.
He went further, writing that "weakened political parties distort the political system," and the majority opinion characterized the decision as one that "treats all political parties equally" and would let parties "participate more freely and compete more fully in the political process."
Of course, Constitutional originalists—we mean people who wrote the Constitution—believed that strong political parties distort the political system. Washington dedicated a portion of his farewell address to a warning against parties. John Adams called them “the greatest political evil” (while admitting they were allowed under the Constitution).
Madison viewed parties as likely inevitable, but that they’d need to be regulated to prevent them from damaging the country.
Money Has Skewed Our Elections. More Money is Going to Skew Them Even More.
It's true that all political parties are being treated the same under the new rule. The Libertarian Party, the Green Party, the Forward Party, and any other ballot-qualified party committee in the country have all had their caps removed.
But, first, none of these other parties has fundraising within several orders of magnitude of the Republican or Democratic Party. Having the cap removed when you’re not up against the limit doesn’t really do much to make you more competitive and bring more choices to the American people.
And, second, a candidate who wants to run without party support is now forgoing the potential for unlimited coordinated spending from a national committee with deep pockets. These candidates will be operating in a world where their major party opponents could see near unlimited spending in the race.
This reality was recognized in the Sixth Circuit’s opinion, which noted in passing that the existing system of party fundraising advantages already "give[s] national parties and their candidates a financial advantage over independents and regional third parties."
Why This Matters for 2026 and Beyond
2026 is seeing one of the broadest and deepest benches of independent candidates in recent memory. We’ve covered a number of independents running for Senate, many of whom were keeping pace with the fundraising totals for major party candidates.
Now, the parties are free to spend an unlimited amount of money in those races to drown out the independent voices that are just starting to gain steam.
Yes, there are still limits on how much money individuals can give to political party committees. Yes, there are still limits on some ways in which money can be spent, especially money directly contributed to candidate committees.
However, recent Supreme Court jurisprudence has been consistent in its view that limits on spending in campaigns are largely abridgements of the First Amendment. There’s no guarantee that any of these limits or restrictions will survive the next major challenge.
As the rift between what’s allowed in our political system and what people want to be allowed in our political system deepens, it’s no wonder that efforts such as those in MT and HI, as well as calls for a Constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United, continue to build up steam.