The Supreme Court's conservative majority voted Wednesday to allow wealthy donors to give to as many political candidates and campaigns as they want, further loosening the reins on giving by big contributors, according to The Washington Post.
According to the majority, limits on big-money contributions violate the givers' constitutional free-speech rights, Chief Justice John Roberts said, the Post reported. Roberts said the aggregate limits do not act to prevent corruption or the appearance of corruption, the rationales the court has upheld as justifying contribution limits.
The overall limits "intrude without justification on a citizen's ability to exercise 'the most fundamental First Amendment activities'," Roberts said, quoting from the court's seminal 1976 campaign finance ruling in Buckley v. Valeo, according to the Post.
Wednesday's ruling voided the overall federal limit on individuals' contributions which was $123,200 in 2013 and 2014, according to the Post.
The justices left in place limits on individual contributions to each candidate for president or Congress, now $2,600 for a primary and another $2,600 for the general election, the Post reported.
Justice Clarence Thomas supported the outcome, but said he would have wiped away all contribution limits as violating the First Amendment, according to the Post.
Justice Stephen Breyer, writing for the liberal dissenters, said that the court's conservatives had "eviscerated our nation's campaign finance laws" through Wednesday's ruling and the earlier Citizens United case. the Post reported.
"If the court in Citizens United opened a door, today's decision we fear will open a floodgate," Breyer said, according to the Post. "It understates the importance of protecting the political integrity of our governmental institution. It creates, we think, a loophole that will allow a single individual to contribute millions of dollars to a political party or to a candidate's campaign."
