Campaign finance laws in the United States have been a contentious political issue since the early days of the union. The most recent major federal law affecting campaign finance was the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA) of 2002, also known as "McCain-Feingold". Key provisions of the law prohibited unregulated contributions to national political parties and limited the use of corporate and union money to fund ads discussing political issues within 60 days of a general election or 30 days of a primary election; However, provisions of BCRA limiting corporate and union expenditures for issue advertising were overturned by the Supreme Court in Federal Election Commission v. Wisconsin Right to Life.
Citizens United is a conservative 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization in the United States founded in 1988. In 2010, the organization won a U.S. Supreme Court case known as Citizens United v. FEC, which struck down as unconstitutional a federal law prohibiting corporations and unions from making expenditures in connection with federal elections. The organization's president and chairman is David Bossie.
The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, commonly known as the McCain–Feingold Act or BCRA, is a United States federal law that amended the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971, which regulates the financing of political campaigns. Its chief sponsors were senators Russ Feingold (D-WI) and John McCain (R-AZ). The law became effective on 6 November 2002, and the new legal limits became effective on January 1, 2003.
First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, 435 U.S. 765 (1978), is a U.S. constitutional law case which defined the free speech right of corporations for the first time. The United States Supreme Court held that corporations have a First Amendment right to make contributions to ballot initiative campaigns. The ruling came in response to a Massachusetts law that prohibited corporate donations in ballot initiatives unless the corporation's interests were directly involved.
Paul Drew Clement is an American lawyer who served as U.S. Solicitor General from 2004 to 2008 and is known for his advocacy before the U.S. Supreme Court. He established his own law firm, Clement & Murphy, in 2022 after leaving Kirkland & Ellis, following that firm’s decision to end its Second Amendment work. He is also a Distinguished Lecturer in Law at Georgetown University and an adjunct professor at New York University School of Law. He was nominated by President George W. Bush on March 14, 2005, for the post of Solicitor General, confirmed by the United States Senate on June 8, 2005, and took the oath of office on June 13.
District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), is a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States. It ruled that the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects an individual's right to keep and bear arms—unconnected with service in a militia—for traditionally lawful purposes such as self-defense within the home, and that the District of Columbia's handgun ban and requirement that lawfully owned rifles and shotguns be kept "unloaded and disassembled or bound by a trigger lock" violated this guarantee. It also stated that the right to bear arms is not unlimited and that certain restrictions on guns and gun ownership were permissible. It was the first Supreme Court case to decide whether the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms for self-defense or whether the right was only intended for state militias.
Anthony McLeod Kennedy is an American lawyer and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1988 until his retirement in 2018. He was nominated to the court in 1987 by President Ronald Reagan, and sworn in on February 18, 1988. After the retirement of Sandra Day O'Connor in 2006, he was considered the swing vote on many of the Roberts Court's 5–4 decisions.
Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. 310 (2010), is a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States regarding campaign finance laws and free speech under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The court held 5–4 that the freedom of speech clause of the First Amendment prohibits the government from restricting independent expenditures for political campaigns by corporations, including nonprofit corporations, labor unions, and other associations.
McDonald v. City of Chicago, 561 U.S. 742 (2010), was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States that found that the right of an individual to "keep and bear arms", as protected under the Second Amendment, is incorporated by the Fourteenth Amendment and is thereby enforceable against the states. The decision cleared up the uncertainty left in the wake of District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) as to the scope of gun rights in regard to the states.
Move to Amend is a national, non-partisan, grassroots organization that seeks to blunt corporate power by amending the United States Constitution to end corporate personhood and state that money is not speech. The group was created in response to the 2010 Supreme Court ruling Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which held that corporations have a First Amendment right to make expenditures from their general treasuries supporting or opposing candidates for political office, arguing that the Court's decision disrupts the democratic process by granting disproportionate influence to the wealthy. Move to Amend advocates for the "We the People" Amendment, currently in Congress as H.J.Res. 48, to establish that constitutional rights are reserved for natural persons only and require the regulation and disclosure of spending in U.S. elections.
American Tradition Partnership, Inc. v. Bullock, 2011 MT 328, is a decision by the Montana Supreme Court ruling that the broad free speech protections given to corporations in Citizens United v. FEC do not apply to Montana's campaign finance laws. The United States Supreme Court reversed the Montana Supreme Court's decision in American Tradition Partnership, Inc. v. Bullock, 567, U.S. 516 (2012), in a short, per curiam opinion issued without oral argument. The court wrote only that the legal issue had already been precluded by Citizens United, and this case offered no new arguments and failed to distinguish that prior decision.
Patrick James Morrisey is an American politician and attorney serving as the 34th Attorney General of West Virginia since 2013. He is a member of the Republican Party.
McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, 572 U.S. 185 (2014), was a landmark decision of the US Supreme Court on campaign finance. The decision held that Section 441 of the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971, which imposed a limit on contributions an individual can make over a two-year period to all national party and federal candidate committees, is unconstitutional.
Douglas S. Chin is an American attorney and politician who served as the 14th Lieutenant Governor of Hawaii from February to December 2018. A member of the Democratic Party, Chin previously was the 14th Attorney General of Hawaii. On December 18, 2017, Chin announced his intent to run for the U.S. House of Representatives. In February 2018, Chin became Lieutenant Governor of Hawaii after the resignation of Shan Tsutsui and after two others in the line of succession declined the office. In August 2018, he lost the Congressional seat's Democratic nomination to Ed Case.
Heffernan v. City of Paterson, 578 U.S. ___ (2016), was a United States Supreme Court case in 2016 concerning the First Amendment rights of public employees. By a 6–2 margin, the Court held that a public employee's constitutional rights might be violated when an employer, believing that the employee was engaging in what would be protected speech, disciplines them because of that belief, even if the employee did not exercise such a constitutional right.
A campaign finance reform amendment refers to any proposed amendment to the United States Constitution to authorize greater restrictions on spending related to political speech, and to overturn Supreme Court rulings which have narrowed such laws under the First Amendment. Several amendments have been filed since Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission and the Occupy movement.
California Proposition 59 is a non-binding advisory question that appeared on the 2016 California November general election ballot. It asked voters if they wanted California to work towards overturning the Citizens United U.S. Supreme Court ruling.
American Promise is a national, non-profit, non-partisan, grassroots organization that advocates for a 28th Amendment to the United States Constitution that would allow the U.S. Congress and states to set reasonable limits on campaign spending in U.S. Elections. Founded in 2016 by Jeff Clements, the former assistant attorney general of Massachusetts, and author of Corporations Are Not People: Reclaiming Democracy From Big Money and Global Corporations, American Promise advocates for campaign finance reform in the United States.
Miller v. Bonta is a pending court case before Judge Roger Benitez of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California concerning California's assault weapon ban, the Roberti–Roos Assault Weapons Control Act of 1989 (AWCA). Judge Roger Benitez struck down the ban in a ruling on June 5, 2021. A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit issued a stay of the ruling on June 21, 2021, which left the ban in place as appeals were litigated. The panel then vacated Judge Benitez’s ruling and remanded it back down after NYSRPA v. Bruen was decided. The case was known as Miller v. Becerra before Rob Bonta succeeded Xavier Becerra as Attorney General of California in April 2021.
