§304, 61 Stat. This information is not intended to replace the law or to change its meaning, nor does this information create or confer any rights for or on any person or bind the Federal Election Commission or the public.

By the 1996 election cycle, between $135 and $150 million was being devoted to these ads, see McConnell, 540 U. S., at 127, n. 20, and because they had no magic words, they failed to trigger the limitation on union or corporate expenditures for electioneering. The interest recognized in Austin stems from a concern that " '[t]he resources in the treasury of a business corporation . The court first found that adjudication was not barred by mootness because the controversy was capable of repetition, yet evading review. htm.

The "functional equivalent" test does nothing more than restate the question (and make clear that the electoral advocacy need not be express). FEDERAL ELECTION COMMISSION v. WISCONSIN RIGHT TO LIFE, INC.(2007). Chief Justice Roberts announced the judgment of the Court and delivered the opinion of the Court with respect to Parts I and II, and an opinion with respect to Parts III and IV, in which Justice Alito joins. Austin, supra, at 660.

"13 They exhorted viewers and listeners to "[c]ontact Senators Feingold and Kohl and tell them to oppose the filibuster," but instead of providing a phone number or e-mail address, they told the audience to go to BeFair.org, a website set up by WRTL. Additionally, the court noted the ads asked the audience to contact both Senators, not just the Senator up for reelection. We now confront such an as-applied challenge.

It would naively underestimate the ingenuity and resourcefulness of persons and groups desiring to buy influence to believe that they would have much difficulty devising expenditures that skirted the restriction on express advocacy of election or defeat but nevertheless benefited the candidate's campaign." McConnell held that express advocacy of a candidate or his opponent by a corporation shortly before an election may be prohibited, along with the functional equivalent of such express advocacy. The claim that §203 on its face does not reach a substantial amount of speech protected under the principal opinion's test--and that the test is therefore compatible with McConnell--seems to me indefensible.

The President persisted in his 1906 message to Congress with another call for "a law prohibiting all corporations from contributing to the campaign expenses of any party," 41 Cong.
But the way to indulge that instinct consistently with the First Amendment is either to eliminate restrictions on independent expenditures altogether or to confine them to one side of the traditional line--the express-advocacy line, set in concrete on a calm day by Buckley, several decades ago. They were worth the money of those who ultimately paid for them.

concerning "reasonable" or "plausible" import that is far from certain, that rests upon consideration of innumerable surrounding circumstances which the speaker may not even be aware of, and that lends itself to distortion by reason of the decisionmaker's subjective evaluation of the importance or unimportance of the challenged speech.
Why did Buckley employ such a "highly strained" reading of the statute, McConnell, 540 U. S., at 280 (opinion of Thomas, J. Finally, the Court concluded that, "[e]ven ... assum[ing] that BCRA will inhibit some constitutionally protected corporate and union speech" (i.e., "pure issue ads," id., at 207, or "genuine issue ads," id., at 206, and n. 88), its application to such ads was insubstantial, and thus the statute was not overbroad, id., at 207. But when it comes to defining what speech qualifies as the functional equivalent of express advocacy subject to such a ban--the issue we do have to decide--we give the benefit of the doubt to speech, not censorship. They ultimately depend, however, upon a judicial judgment (or is it--worse still--a jury judgment?) Thus does the principal opinion institute the very standard that would have prevailed if the Court formally overruled McConnell.

Although The Chief Justice ostensibly stops short of categorically foreclosing consideration of context, see ante, at 20, the application of his test here makes it difficult to see how relevant contextual evidence could ever be taken into account the way it was in McConnell,19 and it is hard to imagine The Chief Justice would ever find an ad to be "susceptible of no reasonable interpretation other than as an appeal to vote for or against a specific candidate," ante, at 16, unless it contained words of express advocacy. The authors of those studies did not conduct discovery of the "actua[l] inten[tions]," ante, at 14, behind any ads; nor, to my knowledge, were the sponsors of campaign ads summoned before researchers to explain their motivations. In McConnell, we found this definition to be "easily understood and objectiv[e]," raising "none of the vagueness concerns that drove our analysis" of the statutory language at issue in Buckley and MCFL, 540 U. S., at 194, and we held that the resulting line separating regulated election speech from general political discourse does not, on its face, violate the First Amendment. Litigation on such a standard may or may not accurately predict electoral effects, but it will unquestionably chill a substantial amount of political speech. Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U. S. 1, 42 (1976) (per curiam). See note following 2 U. S. C. §437h (2000 ed., Supp. Of course, the compelling interest to which the Court referred was " 'the corrosive and distorting effects of immense aggregations of [corporate] wealth,' " id., at 205 (quoting Austin, supra, at 660). 105-167, p. 3994 (1998). " Ante, at 16.

Indeed, the assessment of former House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt, a proponent of campaign-finance reform, may well be correct.

The speech at issue is not the "functional equivalent" of express campaign speech. Id., at 535. [Narrator] And where do the candidates stand? "This argument fails to the extent that the issue ads broadcast during the 30- and 60-day periods preceding federal primary and general elections are the functional equivalent of express advocacy. 1a-48a. I would therefore reconsider the decision that sets us the unsavory task of separating issue-speech from election-speech with no clear criterion. WRTL's ads do not do so; they instead take a position on the filibuster issue and exhort constituents to contact Senators Feingold and Kohl to advance that position. See The Costliest Campaign, Washington Post, Dec. 30, 2004, p. A7.2 And in the 2005-2006 election cycle, the expenditure of more than $2 billion on television shattered the previous record, even without a presidential contest. Moreover, pre-Buckley cases had accorded corporations full First Amendment protection.

43380 (statement of Rep. Hansen)). For that matter, if the studies to which The Chief Justice refers were now to inform our reading of McConnell, they would merely underscore the objective character of the proper way to determine whether §203 is constitutional as applied to a given ad. Rec. Yet any clear rule that would protect all genuine issue ads would cover such a substantial number of ads prohibited by §203 that §203 would be rendered substantially overbroad. Edison Co. v. Public Serv. Pp. We held that, "[r]egardless of whether th[e] concern [for unfair advantage to organizations that amass great wealth] is adequate to support application of §441b to commercial enterprises, a question not before us, that justification" did not support application of the statute to the nonprofit organization that brought the challenge in MCFL. I cannot tell what the future will force upon us, but I respectfully dissent from this judgment today. The district court rejected the FEC's argument and refused to delve into the matter of the intent and underlying meaning of the ads. The Court found that the "vast majority" of ads aired during the 30-day and 60-day periods before elections were "the functional equivalent of express advocacy," id., at 206, but suggested that "pure issue ads," id., at 207, or "genuine issue ads," id., at 206, would be protected.


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