A decades-old law limiting how much money political parties can spend in coordination with candidates was struck down by the Supreme Court on June 30, 2026. Citing First Amendment principles, the court held in NRSC v. FEC that the limit unduly prevented political parties from “freely” and “fully” advocating for their respective nominees. The case marks the Roberts court’s latest chapter in a 20-year trajectory toward a more deregulated campaign finance system.
While not the earth-shattering decision that was Citizens United, the 2010 ruling that struck down limits on corporate and union campaign spending as a violation of their free speech, NRSC v. FEC is still significant. And it has the potential to materially reshape the American political process going forward.
Indeed, campaign finance regulation is a cornerstone of a healthy democracy. Some political theorists even contend that the private funding of campaigns is antithetical to core democratic principles of integrity, equality and responsiveness to voters.
Campaign spending: Freedom or corruption?
At a minimum, it is broadly agreed upon – and observed – that reining in money in politics is necessary to curb all-out corruption, where the wealthy are able to donate unlimited sums of money to politicians in exchange for favors.
Federal Election Commission
The U.S. Supreme Court has historically upheld restrictions on political spending only if they furthered this anti-corruption goal – the idea being that fighting corruption is a compelling enough reason to limit political expression and association conducted via the dollar.
Modern-day discussion of U.S. campaign finance revolves around issues such as dark money, outside-group spending and corporate personhood. Political party spending, by contrast, receives comparatively little attention from scholars, activists and the media.
This asymmetry is not entirely without warrant. Political party spending used to dominate election cycles, with parties sometimes even outspending their own candidates.
In 2000, for example, the Republican National Committee and Democratic National Committee combined spent more money on television ads supporting Texas Gov. George Bush and Vice President Al Gore than the candidates’ own campaigns did.
Over the past two decades, however, political parties have played a waning role in elections. The advent of super PACs, political action committees that can receive and spend unlimited sums of money to support candidates, has led to a degree of outside-group spending – spending made without coordination with any candidate – that far surpasses that of political parties. Moreover, candidates’ growing reliance on small-dollar donations in the age of online fundraising has shifted their financial support base from their party to their individual followers.
Political party spending nonetheless remains consequential in U.S. elections. In the 2024 election cycle, for instance, political parties spent over US$2.6 billion to support federal candidates – a substantial amount, even if modest compared with the $5.5 billion spent by federal candidates themselves and the whopping $15.5 billion spent by PACs and super PACs.
The regulation of party spending is therefore a significant component of the U.S. campaign finance system. And its deregulation could unleash billions of dollars more in spending by parties in future elections.
Quid pro quo risk?
Federal campaign finance law regulates political parties in a variety of ways.
Individuals are limited in how much money they can donate annually to political parties – $10,000 to state and local party committees and $44,300 to national party committees, as of 2025. Political parties are further prohibited from accepting money from corporations and unions for party-building purposes, known as “soft money.”
Finally, prior to the NRSC v. FEC ruling, political parties were subject to limits on how much money they could spend to support a given candidate.
This last restriction has faced the most challenges in court. NRSC v. FEC is not the first time the Supreme Court considered the legality of party expenditure limits.
In the 1990s and early 2000s, the Supreme Court heard two such challenges, both brought by the Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee. In the first case, Colorado Republicans challenged a federal campaign finance provision that limited how much money political parties could independently spend to support candidates. The Supreme Court ultimately struck down the limits as a violation of parties’ First Amendment speech rights.
The second challenge, meanwhile, targeted federal limits on party spending made directly in coordination with party nominees. The Supreme Court heard this case in 2001 and, in a perhaps surprising 5-4 decision, ultimately upheld the limits.
Why the different outcome? In the court’s view, with coordination came a real corruption risk.
Indeed, underlying the Supreme Court’s broader campaign finance doctrine is a long-standing – and controversial – assumption that political spending raises zero corruption concerns when made independent of any collaboration with a candidate. And when corruption is not a concern, the court believes limits on political spending are unjustified.
Using this logic, the Supreme Court identified coordinated party spending as a potential source of corrupt dealings. Specifically, the court found that donors could use political parties as “conduits” to funnel further money to candidates.
For instance, individuals can currently donate up to only $3,500 to a given federal candidate. Yet, they can donate $44,300 to a national party committee, which can then channel that money to the same federal candidate.
Back to the court
The difference between a $3,500 donation and a nearly $50,000 donation is, of course, stark.
In its latter Colorado Republicans opinion, the Supreme Court specifically noted concerning practices born out of this conduit system. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, for instance, used to have exclusive clubs in which generous donors were invited to personally meet with Democratic senatorial candidates.
In the 25 years following this decision, coordinated party expenditure limits remained on the books, with the precise dollar amount changing each election cycle. For 2026, political parties could spend up to $65,300 in coordination with U.S. House candidates, or $130,600 in states with only one representative. The limit, meanwhile, varied for U.S. Senate candidates depending on state population, ranging from $130,600 for Wyoming to $4,071,800 for California.
Hanging on by a mere 5-4 Supreme Court majority, however, campaign finance experts knew the coordinated party expenditure limit rested on shaky ground. And in 2022, with an almost entirely different Supreme Court composition, the National Republican Senatorial Committee and National Republican Congressional Committee sued the Federal Election Commission over its enforcement of the limit.
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Money equals speech
The plaintiffs’ arguments were largely the same as the Colorado Republicans’ over two decades earlier, resting primarily in the First Amendment.
Nevertheless, as the plaintiffs explicitly noted in their briefs, the Supreme Court’s campaign finance doctrine had shifted remarkably under Chief Justice John Roberts’ tenure, moving toward a more libertarian, deregulatory jurisprudence. The plaintiffs thus asked the court to revisit its treatment of coordinated party expenditure limits.
The court answered in NRSC v. FEC, overturning its previous decision on the matter and ultimately striking down the coordinated party expenditure limit. The majority opinion, written by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, largely adopted the First Amendment argument that the limit impedes political parties’ ability to advocate for their candidates.
As for the government’s anti-corruption interest, the court was not convinced that limiting coordinated party expenditures was necessary to curb conduit corruption. Specifically, the court noted that existing disclosure laws and rules about earmarking donations already act as disincentives for donors hoping to use parties as a means to indirectly funnel money to candidates.
Many election law experts will likely argue that this decision will now result in increased circumvention of federal limits on individual contributions to candidates. In her dissent, Justice Elena Kagan contended that the decision will only further contribute to “a legal regime increasingly unable to stop political corruption, and thus to preserve our institutions’ democratic legitimacy.”
Still, not all experts see today’s outcome as a cause for concern. Numerous scholars have called for the bolstering of political party power in light of an increasingly polarized country, viewing parties as an antidote to ideological extremism fueled by outside-group spending. For those scholars, permitting unlimited coordinated expenditures by parties may help to realize that goal.
One thing is certain after the NRSC v. FEC decision: Political party spending is now unleashed. Parties will likely play a bigger role in future elections than they have in some time. Whether that is good for American democracy remains to be seen.
