PACs and the Supreme Court’s Pending Decision on Corporate Spending

There is a lot of palace intrigue within the campaign finance community over the case before the U.S. Supreme Court to alter a one hundred year-old ban on corporate spending in elections.  In Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the court took the unusual action to hear a broader second argument of the case on September 9–one month before the court’s regular session begins in October.

The case deals with how the nonprofit group Citizens United intended to use corporate funds to promote its film “Hillary: The Movie” prior to the 2008 Democratic presidential convention in which former Sen. Clinton was seeking nomination.  At stake is whether to overrule two court decisions that ban corporate advocacy spending in election campaigns (Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce) and corporate and union spending on TV and radio messages—so called electioneering communications—in the weeks prior to an election (parts of McConnell v. Federal Election Commission).  Its outcome is any political or judicial prognosticator’s best guess.