Restoring the First Amendment – One Case at a Time

Hans von Spakovsky / March 29, 2010

On Friday, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia struck another blow towards restoring every American’s First Amendment right to engage in political speech. In SpeechNow.org v. Federal Election Commission, the court applied the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Citizens United to throw out another pernicious portion of the federal campaign finance law also known as McCain-Feingold.

SpeechNow is an unincorporated association of individuals that wanted to run independent ads in the 2008 election that supported candidates for federal office that shared their views on the First Amendment right of free speech and freedom to assemble. However, federal law limited the amount of contributions that could be made to the association because the FEC considered SpeechNow to be a political action committee or PAC. Individuals are limited to giving no more than $5,000 in contributions to a PAC in a given year. (more…)