Supreme Court strikes down post-Watergate limits on party-to-candidate coordinated spending, 6-3

Summary

The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 on June 30 in NRSC v. FEC (No. 24-621) to strike down federal limits on how much national party committees can spend in coordination with individual candidates, ending a post-Watergate-era campaign finance restriction that had stood since 1974. The case was brought by the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the National Republican Congressional Committee, then-Ohio Senate candidate JD Vance, and then-Congressman Steve Chabot, who filed suit in the Southern District of Ohio in 2022. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote for the conservative majority, finding the coordinated-expenditure caps in 52 U.S.C. § 30116(d) violate the First Amendment. The decision overrules FEC v. Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee (2001). Previous caps ranged from $65,300 to $4 million per election depending on chamber and state size; all such limits are now void. Kagan, joined by Sotomayor and Jackson, dissented: "For over half a century, a federal statute has guarded against actual and apparent quid pro quo corruption in our political system by limiting the amount of money a donor can contribute to a candidate. But today, the Court rewrites the rules, to allow circumvention of the contribution limits." Kagan also wrote the majority enables "a party to serve as an alternative checking account for a campaign."

The split

The NRSC released a memo characterizing the ruling as "a decisive First Amendment victory," arguing that coordination between a party and its candidates is core political speech. The Campaign Legal Center, which defended the limits in court, warned the ruling "removes the last guardrail against parties becoming shadow campaigns" and noted that combined with Citizens United and McCutcheon, there is now no federal ceiling on what a party can funnel to any candidate. Kagan's dissent frames the trajectory as a "legal regime increasingly unable to stop political corruption, and thus to preserve our institutions' democratic legitimacy."

By the numbers

• 6-3, vote (Kavanaugh, Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Barrett vs. Kagan, Sotomayor, Jackson)
• 1974, year the coordinated-expenditure caps were enacted
• $65,300 to $4 million, previous per-election cap range depending on chamber and state
• 4, months until the 2026 midterms when the ruling takes immediate effect
• 2001, year of Colorado Republican II, the precedent the court overruled

Why it matters

Political parties can now spend unlimited sums coordinating directly with Senate and House candidates, effectively turning them into extensions of candidate campaigns. The ruling completes a sequence of First Amendment decisions stretching from Citizens United through McCutcheon to today, dismantling most federal campaign finance architecture built after Watergate. It lands four months before the 2026 midterms, giving the national committees immediate capacity to absorb unlimited contributions and redirect them as coordinated spending.

What to watch

• Whether Democratic Party structures parallel coordinated-spending vehicles before November
• FEC rulemaking to adapt existing rules to the new legal landscape
• Whether Congress responds with new campaign finance legislation, and whether any such law could survive First Amendment review under Kavanaugh's majority logic
• Key 2026 Senate battlegrounds where coordinated party spending could exceed previous limits by orders of magnitude