WASHINGTON — In a seismic ruling for campaign finance law, the Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that federal limits on coordinated spending between political parties and their preferred candidates are unconstitutional.
The 6-3 ruling paves the way for Republicans to exploit their massive fundraising advantage in the 2026 midterm cycle as they try to keep control of the House and Senate.
“The Court’s decision today treats all political parties equally. It will allow all political parties—including the DNC and RNC and the respective Senate and House campaign committees, as well as other parties and party committees—to participate more freely and compete more fully in the political process,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote for the majority.
Kavanaugh explained that limits on political parties’ coordinated expenditures restrict their “speech in support of their own candidates during political campaigns.”
The National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) had mounted a First Amendment challenge in 2022 to the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971, arguing that it violated the First Amendment by capping coordinated spending, which is mainly used on campaign advertising.
As of 2025, the limits, which the Federal Election Commission (FEC) adjusted for inflation each year and depend in part on the voting age population of each state, ranged from $127,200 to $3,946,100 for Senate candidates; $127,200 for House candidates in Alaska, Delaware, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming; and $63,600 in all other states.
The high court had upheld the expenditure limits in the 2001 case of FEC v. Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee, but the NRSC argued that events since that ruling — including the rise of Super PACs, changes in campaign finance law, and the court’s own decision in 2010’s Citizens United v. FEC — had made the 2001 decision obsolete.
The decision is one of the most consequential campaign finance-related cases to come before the court since Citizens United, which struck down limits on political spending by corporations.
Supreme Court precedent already allows Congress to cap donations from individuals to campaigns.
“Restrictions on campaign expenditures for political speech are permitted only in the exceedingly rare circumstances where they promote a compelling interest and are the ‘least restrictive means to further the articulated interest,’” Kavanaugh wrote.
“…The Court now recognizes ‘only one legitimate governmental interest for restricting campaign finances: preventing corruption or the appearance of corruption.’”
Proponents of nixing the coordinated funding limits had argued they weakened the power of the parties by making them subject to restrictions that did not apply to super PACs.
“Republicans have achieved a major victory with coordinated spending limits being struck down, and they are in the driver’s seat because of their massive cash advantage,” former FEC Chairman Sean Cooksey, current managing director at political consulting firm BGR Group, told The Post.
“The GOP can now work with its candidates to buy more ads at cheaper prices to maintain their majorities this fall,” added Cooksey, a former counsel to Vice President JD Vance.
Official Republican campaign arms have massive cash advantages over their Democratic counterparts across the board, an advantage that now promises to be far more impactful with coordinated spending limits gone.
For example, the Republican National Committee has more than $125 million cash on hand, compared to the Democratic National Committee’s measly $14.8 million, according to the latest FEC filings.
Liberal Justice Elena Kagan had raised concerns during December’s oral arguments that eliminating coordination rules would be an end-run around restrictions on how much money donors can funnel to campaigns.
“The super PAC can’t be coordinated. And these party expenditures can be coordinated so they’re more helpful to the candidate,” she said at the time. “They effectively function as contributions to the candidate. There can be coordination to the max.”
In a dissent backed by her liberal peers, Kagan argued that removing the limits would allow bad actors to circumvent laws intended to guard against quid pro quo corruption.
“[A] candidate could ask a donor to make a substantial contribution to the party so as to finance his own campaign expenses,” she wrote. “It would then be as though the candidate contribution limits did not exist: The donor could give far more to the party than to the candidate directly, understanding that the money would be passed through to the candidate.”
“The majority ushers in untold harm,” Kagan warned.
While the official GOP congressional campaign arms sought to quash the restrictions on coordination with candidates, their Democratic counterparts largely opposed the effort.
Marc Elias, a longtime election attorney for Democrats, had argued before the Supreme Court last year that the restrictions protect the parties by allowing them to build up critical infrastructure and preventing them from devolving into glorified campaign slush funds.
