The U.S. Supreme Court has handed down a decision in the case of McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission that strikes down overall limits on campaign contributions.

Although the Supreme Court has weighed in often in the past on the issue of campaign spending, recently ruling in Citizens United v. FEC (2010) that it should be protected as free speech, the Court has said little in the past few decades about the constitutionality of donation limits.

In McCutcheon v. FEC, the Court was asked to rule on whether there should be a cap on the total combined donations that can be made by an individual during a two-year election cycle. Under current law, an individual may contribute a total of $48,600 to all Federal candidates and a total of $74,600 to all non-candidate political committees.

In a 5-to-4 vote on April 2, the justices said that Americans have a right to give the legal maximum to candidates for Congress and President, as well as to parties and political action committees, without worrying that they will violate the law if they reach the current limit on all contributions.

Speaking for the majority, Chief Justice Roberts said that the overall limits “intrude without justification on a citizen’s ability to exercise `the most fundamental First Amendment activities.'”

In his dissent, Justice Breyer wrote that, taken with the Court’s Citizens United ruling, “today’s decision eviscerates our Nation’s campaign finance laws, leaving a remnant incapable of dealing with the grave problems of democratic legitimacy that those laws were intended to resolve.”

For background, see the November 2013 issue of Supreme Court Debates on Campaign Fundraising and the September 2010 issue of Congressional Digest on Campaign Finance and Free Speech.