Supreme Court will hear JD Vance, GOP campaign finance case

The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear a case brought by Vice President JD Vance and GOP committees challenging campaign finance restrictions.

The high court will take up the case when its next term starts in October, Taccording to The Hill news outlet.

In 2001, the court upheld “coordinated party expenditure limits,” which were first passed as part of broader campaign finance reforms in the 1970s.

In 2022, while a senator, Vance began a new attempt to get rid of the limits under the First Amendment's freedom of speech clause with then-Rep. Steve Chabot, R-Ohio, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, and the National Republican Congressional Committee. 

The plaintiffs wrote to the court that it is “past time” to clarify the court's earlier decision or outright overrule it.

“And it likely marks the last chance this Court will get to tackle the question for quite some time, as neither committees nor candidates will squander their limited resources on another challenge if this petition is denied,” their attorneys wrote.

The provision limits how the Republican National Committee, Democratic National Committee, and other political party committees can spend their funds while cooperating with a candidate.

While the Supreme Court has invalidated limits on committees' spending that are made independently from campaigns under the First Amendment, it has declined to do the same for coordinated expenses.

Last year, committees could spend between $123,600 and roughly $3.8 million in coordination with Senate candidates and between $61,800 and $123,600 for House candidates, depending on the state's size.

The Trump administration abandoned the defense of the provision's constitutionality, and is supporting Vance's petition to the court.

“A party performs that function most effectively in cooperation with the candidates themselves. By restricting that cooperation, the party-expenditure limit severely burdens the rights of parties and candidates alike,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote in court filings, informing the justices that they should appoint outside counsel to argue the other side.

Days after Sauer's court filing, the DNC, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee jointly asked to be allowed to defend the spending limits, which no one opposed.

“The Solicitor General’s reversal leaves the 50-year-old limitation on coordinated spending by political parties, and this Court’s 24-year-old precedent upholding it, entirely undefended before the Court,” the Democratic Party wrote in court filings.