Supreme Court says courts must consider "as applied" challenges to BCRA
The New York Times reports: The Supreme Court, ruling today in an important campaign finance case, opened the door to a new round of legal challenges to the limits Congress placed four years ago on election advertisements paid for by corporations and broadcast during the weeks before federal elections.
The court's opinion was surprising, coming only six days after the argument. It was unsigned, barely two pages long, and unanimous.
It may, however, have considerable impact, given that the court itself, two years ago, had appeared to foreclose further challenges to the "electioneering communications" portion of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002. The Supreme Court at that time upheld the law, usually known as McCain-Feingold after the names of its Senate sponsors, in a 5-to-4 decision that considered multiple free-speech challenges to the statute "on its face" rather than in particular applications.
The court ruled today that both the government and a special three-judge federal district court here had misinterpreted its earlier decision to foreclose future challenges to the advertising restrictions as they applied to particular advertisements or to particular corporate sponsors.
The justices vacated the lower court's opinion and ordered it to consider the merits of an anti-abortion group's argument that the statute, if applied to an advertisement the group sought to broadcast on Wisconsin television stations in the summer of 2004, would violate the First Amendment rights to free speech and to petition the government. -- Justices Ask Court to Reconsider Campaign Finance Case - New York Times