Quote:
Originally Posted by larrymcg421
Stevens himself makes a good argument in his dissent that there was no actual "ban", seeing as corporations and unions can and have formed PACs.
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It's a good argument. Just for discussion sake, here's the majority opinion response to that:
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Even if a PAC could somehow allow a corporation to speak—and it does not—the option to form PACs does not alleviate the First Amendment problems with §441b. PACs are burdensome alternatives; they are expensive to administer and subject to extensive regulations. For example, every PAC must appoint a treasurer, forward donations to the treasurer promptly, keep detailed records of the identities of the persons making donations, preserve receipts for three years, and file an organization statement and report changes to this information within 10 days.See id., at 330–332 (quoting MCFL, 479 U. S., at 253– 254).
And that is just the beginning. PACs must file detailed monthly reports with the FEC, which are due at different times depending on the type of election that is about to occur:
“‘These reports must contain information regarding the amount of cash on hand; the total amount of re-ceipts, detailed by 10 different categories; the identification of each political committee and candidate’s authorized or affiliated committee making contributions, and any persons making loans, providing rebates, re-funds, dividends, or interest or any other offset to op-erating expenditures in an aggregate amount over $200; the total amount of all disbursements, detailed by 12 different categories; the names of all authorized or affiliated committees to whom expenditures aggregating over $200 have been made; persons to whom loan repayments or refunds have been made; the total sum of all contributions, operating expenses, outstanding debts and obligations, and the settlement terms of the retirement of any debt or obligation.’” 540 U. S., at 331–332 (quoting MCFL, supra, at 253– 254).
PACs have to comply with these regulations just to speak. This might explain why fewer than 2,000 of the millions of corporations in this country have PACs.
PACs, furthermore, must exist before they can speak. Given the onerous restrictions, a corporation may not be able to establish a PAC in time to make its views known regarding candidates and issues in a current campaign.
Section 441b’s prohibition on corporate independent expenditures is thus a ban on speech. As a “restriction on the amount of money a person or group can spend onpolitical communication during a campaign,” that statute “necessarily reduces the quantity of expression by restricting the number of issues discussed, the depth of their exploration, and the size of the audience reached.” Buck-ley v. Valeo, 424 U. S. 1, 19 (1976) (per curiam). Were the Court to uphold these restrictions, the Government could repress speech by silencing certain voices at any of the various points in the speech process. See McConnell, supra, at 251 (opinion of SCALIA, J.) (Government couldrepress speech by “attacking all levels of the production
and dissemination of ideas,” for “effective public communication requires the speaker to make use of the services of others”).
If §441b applied to individuals, no one would believe that it is merely a time, place, or manner restriction on speech. Its purpose and effect are to silence entities whose voices the Government deems to be suspect.