Buckley V. Valeo

The Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 and its 1974 amendments faced a constitutional challenge in Buckley v. Valeo (1976). The resulting decision of the U.S. Supreme Court has set the parameters of constitutionally permissible regulation of political campaigns for over 30 years. Political campaigns depend on the mass media and require the spending of money. The relationship between political communication in the modern age and the raising and spending of money thus assumes constitutional dimensions:

The Supreme Court in Buckley considered that two aspects of First Amendment freedom were potentially impaired by FECA. First, limits on campaign expenditures by candidates and others were held to “heavily burden core First Amendment expressions” because they represented “substantial rather than merely theoretical restraints on the quantity and diversity of political speech” (Buckley, p. 19). Accordingly, limits on campaign expenditures were struck down as unconstitutional because they were direct limits on political speech.

Second, the Buckley court upheld restrictions on the size of campaign contributions. The court considered that making a contribution of money to a candidate, like joining a political party, served to affiliate a person with a candidate and to enable like-minded persons to pool their resources in furtherance of common political goals. This right of free association is a “basic constitutional freedom” that is “closely allied to freedom of speech and a right which, like free speech, lies at the foundation of a free society.” In view of the fundamental nature of the right to associate, governmental “action which may have the effect of curtailing the freedom to associate is subject to the closest scrutiny” (Buckley, p. 25).

However, the limits on contributions were upheld because the restraints on political speech were “marginal” in that the contributor remained free to spend independently, associate with candidates in other ways, and “the transformation of contributions into political debate involves speech by someone other than the contributor,” viz. the candidate (p. 21). The Supreme Court concluded that a compelling governmental interest in the prevention of corruption or the appearance of corruption from large contributions justified these less serious impairments of First Amendment activity.

The Buckley decision substantially altered the campaign finance landscape envisaged by Congress. Major features in FECA 1974 were declared unconstitutional: limits on candidate spending, limits on independent spending, and limits on expenditures of candidates'personal funds. While one goal of the legislation had been to limit the cost of election campaigns, the Buckley court found this to be impermissible: “The First Amendment denies government the power to determine that spending to promote one's political views is wasteful, excessive, or unwise” (p. 57). The court did uphold expenditure limitations in the context of the public funding of presidential election campaigns because candidates could voluntarily choose to limit their expenditures in return for public funds.

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