Supreme Court rules for Sen. Cruz in the campaign finance case
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court’s conservative majority sided Monday with Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and struck down a provision of federal campaign finance law, a ruling that a dissenting justice said runs the risk of causing “further disrepute” to American politics.
The court, by a 6-3 vote, said the provision Cruz challenged limiting the repayment of personal loans from candidates to their campaigns violates the Constitution. The decision comes just as campaigning for the 2022 midterm elections is intensifying.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority that the provision “burdens core political speech without proper justification.”
The Biden administration had defended it as an anti-corruption measure, but Roberts wrote the government had not been able to show that the provision “furthers a permissible anticorruption goal, rather than the impermissible objective of simply limiting the amount of money in politics.”
Justice Elena Kagan disagreed, writing that for two decades the provision checked “crooked exchanges.” Kagan said in a dissent for herself and the court’s two other liberals that the majority, in striking down the provision, “greenlights all the sordid bargains Congress thought right to stop.” She said the decision “can only bring this country’s political system into further disrepute.”
In an emailed statement, Cruz’s attorney, Charles Cooper, said the ruling: “is a victory for the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech in the political process.”
The case involved a section of the 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, commonly referred to as the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance law. The provision said that if a candidate lends his or her campaign money before an election, the campaign cannot repay the candidate more than $250,000 using money raised after Election Day. The provision said loans could still be repaid with money raised before the election.
Cruz, who has served in the Senate since 2013 and ran unsuccessfully for president in 2016, loaned his campaign $260,000 the day before the 2018 general election for the purpose of challenging the law.
Cruz’s spokesman, Steve Guest, said in an emailed statement that the senator was “gratified” by the decision, which Guest said would “help invigorate our democratic process by making it easier for challengers to take on and defeat career politicians.”