The Trump Justice Department is reversing the federal government’s Supreme Court defense of longstanding campaign finance laws and is now urging justices to strike down some of the last remaining limits on election spending.
To defend the law in the upcoming case — which was initially brought by Republicans including now-Vice President JD Vance — the court has appointed a former law clerk who worked for Justices Brett Kavanaugh and John Roberts. The attorney previously argued against government regulators and the expansive enforcement of anti-bribery laws, as he represented a top business lobbying group now fighting to repeal the campaign finance rule.
Taken together, the moves mean the little-noticed case is being surrounded by conservatives who could deliver the most sweeping campaign finance deregulation since the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United v. FEC decision opened the door to massive corporate spending and untraceable dark money flowing into the U.S. political system.
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Also lining up behind the case are a constellation of powerful conservative groups and U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who are pressing the justices to build on Citizens United and use this narrow and technical legal matter as an opportunity to eliminate what is left of America’s campaign finance restrictions.
“People don’t like how concentrated political money has become,” said Daniel Weiner, who tracks money and elections at the Brennan Center for Justice. “What this case threatens to do is eliminate one of the last meaningful guardrails.”
In National Republican Senatorial Committee v. FEC, petitioners are asking the high court to strike down a post-Watergate rule that caps how much political parties can spend in direct coordination with their candidates. That limit has long served as a firewall against donor influence. Now, experts warn that the government’s refusal to defend the rule could be laying the groundwork for its repeal, which could trigger a new wave of campaign finance deregulation.
The case began in 2022 when then-Sen. JD Vance and other Republicans argued that limits on coordinated spending violated the First Amendment. As expected, after a federal appeals court rejected the argument, Vance and his allies appealed the decision to the Supreme Court.
Federal attorneys under President Joe Biden were poised to defend the campaign-finance rule. But with President Donald Trump back in office and Vance as his vice president, the Justice Department flipped. Now, Trump’s Solicitor General, John Sauer, is urging the Court to strike down the law.
“It’s a pretty unusual posture,” said Tara Malloy of the Campaign Legal Center, a government watchdog group. “And it certainly raises the question of exactly what type of arguments are going to be brought in defense of this law.”
In a brief submitted to the court in May, Sauer, best known as Trump’s lawyer in the presidential immunity case that held presidents can’t be prosecuted for official acts, called the legal precedent upholding the campaign-donation limits “grievously wrong” and “severely undermined” by subsequent decisions by the Roberts Court expanding political speech and easing corruption rules.