The US Supreme Court on Monday struck down federal limits on how much political parties can spend in coordination with their candidates, ruling 6-3 that the restrictions violate the First Amendment‘s free speech protections.

The decision in National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Commission overrules the court’s 2001 decision in FEC v. Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee, which had upheld the coordinated-expenditure caps as a permissible anti-corruption measure.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote on behalf of the majority that the coordinated-expenditure limits under the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) are “disproportionate” and not “necessary” or “narrowly tailored” to serve the government’s interest in preventing circumvention of base contribution limits. The majority concluded that base contribution limits, earmarking rules, and disclosure requirements are sufficient to prevent quid pro quo corruption without also restricting party speech.

Quoting the Supreme Court’s 1976 decision in Buckley v. Valeo, Kavanaugh wrote:

Because ‘virtually every means of communicating ideas in today’s mass society requires the expenditure of money,’ a ‘restriction on the amount of money a person or group can spend on political communication during a campaign necessarily reduces the quantity of expression by restricting the number of issues discussed, the depth of their exploration, and the size of the audience reached.

Under FECA, national party committees were limited to spending between $65,300 and $130,600 in coordination with individual House candidates and between $130,600 and roughly $4 million for Senate candidates, with a cap of about $32 million for a presidential candidate.

The majority rejected four potential justifications for the limits: reducing campaign spending, preventing party influence over candidates, curbing “undue influence” by donors, and preventing circumvention of contribution limits. On the first three, the court found them either abandoned or foreclosed by more recent precedents including McCutcheon v. FEC (2014) and FEC v. Ted Cruz for Senate (2022). On circumvention, the court acknowledged the argument was “serious” but found existing earmarking and disclosure laws adequate.

The court also pointed to the experience of the states, noting that a majority of states do not impose coordinated-expenditure limits on parties at the state level and that “no evidence of corruption” via circumvention “has materialized.”

The case was originally brought in 2022 by the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the National Republican Congressional Committee, then-Senate candidate JD Vance, and then-Representative Steve Chabot. Vice President Vance’s standing was preserved because he still maintains an active statement of candidacy with the FEC indicating his intent to run for Senate in 2028, along with an active campaign committee.

The US government took the unusual step of siding with the challengers, agreeing that Colorado II no longer retains vitality and declining to defend the constitutionality of the limits. The court appointed attorney Roman Martinez as amicus curiae to argue in favor of upholding the Sixth Circuit’s judgment. The Democratic National Committee and the party’s Senate and House campaign committees intervened to defend the limits.

In a dissent, Justice Elena Kagan, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, warned the decision would allow donors to circumvent base contribution limits by routing money through party committees. Kagan detailed how joint fundraising committees already allow a single donor to write a check exceeding $550,000 to a candidate’s victory fund. Before today’s ruling, the coordinated-expenditure caps ensured that most of that money went to general party operations rather than directly funding the candidate’s campaign.

“With no limits on coordinated expenditures, the party can serve as the candidate’s checking account,” Kagan wrote. She argued that earmarking rules are inadequate because circumvention through joint fundraising committees does not require any earmarking at all; a donor need only write a large check to the candidate’s victory fund without directing how the money should be spent.

Kagan also criticized the majority’s treatment of stare decisis, the doctrine that compels courts to follow judicial precedent, writing that the decision “can join the parade of those recently overruling established law because of a new majority’s new outlook on a consequential matter.”

The ruling applies only to political parties, not to outside groups. The court noted in a footnote that its decision does not address the separate statutory limits on coordinated expenditures by Super PACs, corporations, or other non-party organizations. The case was reversed and remanded to the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.