10-238 & 10-239 Arizona Free Enterprise Club’s Freedom Club PAC v. Bennett

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Constitutional Law
First Amendment; campaign finance; matching funds

A state law that matches campaign spending by giving money to the candidate’s publicly financed opponent substantially burdens political speech and is not sufficiently justified by a compelling interest to survive First Amendment scrutiny.

The burdens that matching funds impose on independent expenditure groups are akin to those imposed on the privately financed candidates themselves. The more money spent on behalf of a privately financed candidate or in opposition to a publicly funded candidate, the more money the publicly funded candidate receives from the State. The effect of a dollar spent on election speech is a guaranteed financial payout to the publicly funded candidate the group opposes, and spending one dollar can result in the flow of dollars to multiple candidates. In some ways, the burdens imposed on independent groups by matching funds are more severe than the burdens imposed on privately financed candidates. Independent groups, of course, are not eligible for public financing. As a result, those groups can only avoid matching funds by changing their message or choosing not to speak altogether. Presenting independent expenditure groups with such a choice—trigger matching funds, change your message, or do not speak—makes the matching funds provision particularly burdensome to those groups and certainly contravenes “the fundamental rule of protection under the First Amendment, that a speaker has the autonomy to choose the content of his own message.” Hurley v. Irish-American Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Group of Boston, Inc., 515 U. S. 557, 573.

611 F. 3d 510, reversed.

10-238 & 10-239 Arizona Free Enterprise Club’s Freedom Club PAC v. Bennett

Roberts, C.J.; Kagan, J., dissenting.

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