Supreme Court Also Strikes Down Post-Watergate Limits on Political Party Spending

Here's the quick version: the Supreme Court just tore up one of the oldest campaign finance rules on the books, and it's going to mean a lot more money flooding into elections — including the midterms coming up this fall.

On Tuesday, June 30, the Supreme Court struck down spending limits that had been in place since 1974 — rules Congress passed after the Watergate scandal to stop political parties from dumping unlimited cash directly into their candidates' campaigns. For over 50 years, those guardrails were a basic feature of how American elections worked. Now they're gone.

The vote was 6-3, straight down ideological lines — the six conservative justices in the majority, the three liberals dissenting. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote the ruling, arguing the old limits violated political parties' First Amendment rights to free speech. His logic: spending money on elections is a form of protected speech, so capping how much a party can spend on its own candidate is unconstitutional.

Here's the key distinction that makes this ruling such a big deal: before today, Super PACs — those outside groups that can raise and spend unlimited money — were already unrestricted. BUT they couldn't directly coordinate with candidates. Political parties, on the other hand, could coordinate with candidates, but faced strict dollar limits on how much they could spend doing so. Now, parties get both privileges. They can coordinate freely with their candidates AND spend without a cap. That's a combination no other political entity has had before.

To put the old limits in concrete terms: under the rules just struck down, party committees could only spend between $65,300 and $4 million in coordination with candidates, depending on the race. Those caps are now history.

Who brought this case? Republicans — specifically the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the National Republican Congressional Committee, and then-Senator JD Vance (yes, now the VP). The Trump Justice Department backed them and had already stopped enforcing the limits before the ruling even came down. Democrats stepped in to defend the law after the DOJ walked away.

The dissent from Justice Elena Kagan was pointed: she warned that with no limits on coordinated spending, a party can essentially function as a candidate's personal 'checking account,' and that the system is now 'increasingly unable to stop political corruption.'

This doesn't come out of nowhere. It's part of a steady pattern of the Supreme Court loosening campaign finance rules — starting with Citizens United in 2010, which unleashed corporate spending, and continuing through multiple rulings since. This is just the latest and arguably most consequential step.

Why does it matter to you personally? More money in elections generally means more ads, more influence from big donors, and — depending on your view — either more political speech or more risk of corruption shaping the candidates you vote for. With the 2026 midterms months away, this ruling lands at a moment when every Senate and House seat is in play. Party committees are already celebrating and signaling they're ready to spend aggressively. The elections you'll vote in this November just got a whole lot more expensive.