Columbus, OH – On Thursday, The Buckeye Institute filed an amicus brief in National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Commission (NRSC v. FEC), calling on the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn Federal Election Commission v. Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee (Colorado II) and end the government’s harmful and unnecessary limits on free speech.

“In his dissent in Colorado II, Justice Clarence Thomas asked a simple question: Has the government demonstrated that coordinated expenditures by political parties give rise to corruption?” said Jay R. Carson, senior litigator at The Buckeye Institute. “This case gives the U.S. Supreme Court the opportunity to answer Justice Thomas’s question with an emphatic no.”

The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly said that preventing quid pro quo corruption or its appearance is Congress’s only legitimate interest in limiting speech in an election. In its brief, The Buckeye Institute argues that coordinated expenditures between political parties and candidates pose no particular threat of corruption, thus, the FEC’s blanket restriction on coordination is an excessive limit on free speech.

A realistic look at the current campaign spending landscape shows that coordinated expenditures by political parties pose no more risk of quid pro quo corruption than uncoordinated expenditures by a political action committee or an individual, which are permissible. In fact, coordinated spending by political parties serves the goal of political accountability because national, state, and county parties are tied to an entire slate of candidates and a public platform.  

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