The current Supreme Court has been incrementally restoring the First Amendment right of Americans to spend on political campaigns.

A 6-3 majority on Tuesday took another step toward that end by overturning federal limits on coordinated spending by candidates and parties (NRSC v. FEC), reports the editors of the WSJ.

Our political parties seem weaker because Congress, after the Watergate scandal, tried to purge money from politics.

Congress limited coordinated expenditures to reduce “what it saw as wasteful and excessive campaign spending,’”

Justice Kavanaugh writes:

Such limits “preclude parties from amplifying the voice of their adherents; impose additional monetary costs and burdens on political parties; and inflict a “‘stifling effect on the ability of the party to do what it exists to do.’”

Isn’t this running smack into the Court’s First Amendment precedents? The Precedents have repeatedly held that “Congress may not dictate how much political speech is too much or how much spending on speech is too much.”

Justice Kavanaugh continues…

There is “only one legitimate governmental interest for restricting campaign finances: preventing corruption or the appearance of corruption.”

Coordinated spending limits aren’t necessary to advance either interest since “prophylaxis upon prophylaxis upon prophylaxis already serve to prevent quid pro quo corruption or its appearance […]

This also includes contribution limits to candidates, disclosure requirements and restrictions on how much donors can contribute to parties that is earmarked for candidates.

The Supreme’s three liberal Justices accuse the majority of jettisoning “a rule needed to protect our democracy’s integrity” and creating “a legal regime increasingly unable to stop political corruption, and thus to preserve our institutions’ democratic legitimacy,” according to Justice Elena Kagan.

Gently rebuffing the criticism, Justice Kavanaugh notes spending coordination limits have weakened parties in ways that “distort the political system. And in the views of many, the relatively diminished political parties have ushered in increased political polarization and fragmentation.”

Democrats will benefit as much as Republicans, the WSJ reminds its readers.

The root cause of such political distortions, in the view of the WSJ, is the Court’s blunder in Buckley v. Valeo (1976), which upheld donor contribution limits under a lower level of First Amendment scrutiny than campaign spending limits. “A First Amendment distinction between political spending and contributions is dubious.”

[…] in light of the Court’s modern campaign-finance precedents, notably Citizens United (2010), which did away with spending limits on corporations and unions. Now businesses and individuals can give unlimited amounts to Super PACs, but are limited in how much they can contribute to parties and candidates. This favors some speakers over others.

Sooner or later the Court has to wrestle with its Buckley mistake.