Of all the puzzling things about the Supreme Court's recent move to rethink corporate political spending limits, the strangest is the timing, writes Eliza Newlin Carney in her weekly column "Rules of the Game."
It's odd enough that the high court should postpone a narrow ruling on the case at hand, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, and instead set the stage to broadly re-examine whether corporate campaign expenditures may be restricted at all.
The conservative group Citizens United had asked the court to reject restrictions in the 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act that would have forced it to disclose who paid for its 2008 movie critical of then-presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton. But the court appears poised to go much further.
Having heard oral arguments on March 24, the court has now ordered a second argument for Sept. 9 and has asked for new briefs on whether it should overturn a landmark 1990 ruling that upheld a decades-old ban on independent corporate campaign expenditures, Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce. The BCRA ad disclosure rules will also be on the table.
"They're being very activist in laying down this rehearing and suggesting they might overturn the traditional ban on corporate expenditures," said Trevor Potter, a former FEC chairman and president of the Campaign Legal Center. "It's a very aggressive action."
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