Litigation

?Soft Money? Ban Affirmed by Supreme Court

By Peter Hardin

The Supreme Court has affirmed, with no comment, a lower court ruling that upheld a ban on unlimited contributions to political parties, called “soft money.”

The high court issued its order Tuesday, refusing a request by the Republican National Committee to consider ending the ban on unlimited donations by corporations, unions and others to national party committees, according to an Associated Press article.

A three-judge panel of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia found the ban constitutional in March. But the panel voiced reservations about squaring this part of the 2002 congressional rewrite of federal campaign finance law, called McCain-Feingold, with the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision this year, a New York Times blog reported.

Richard Hasen, a law professor, wrote in his Election Law Blog that the challenge before the Supreme Court amounted to a “very weak case for overturning the ban” and that the Tuesday order “is only temporary good news for those who think the soft money ban is an important anticorruption component of federal campaign finance law.”

Full post as published by The Gavel on June 29, 2010 (boomark / email).