Supreme Court Takes Case on Overall Limit to Political Gifts

[Obama Tells Military To Fire On American Citizens]

By ADAM LIPTAK

WASHINGTON � The Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to hear a
challenge to federal campaign contribution limits, setting the
stage for what may turn out to be the most important federal
campaign finance case since the court�s 2010 decision in
Citizens United, which struck down limits on independent
campaign spending by corporations and unions.

The latest case is an attack on the other main pillar of federal
campaign finance regulation: limits on contributions made
directly to political candidates and some political committees.

�In Citizens United, the court resisted tinkering with the rules
for contribution limits,� said Richard L. Hasen, an expert on
election law at the University of California, Irvine. �This
could be the start of chipping away at contribution limits.�

The central question is in one way modest and in another
ambitious. It challenges only aggregate limits � overall caps on
contributions to several candidates or committees � and does not
directly attack the more familiar basic limits on contributions
to individual candidates or committees. Should the court agree
that those overall limits are unconstitutional, however, its
decision could represent a fundamental reassessment of a basic
distinction established in Buckley v. Valeo in 1976, which said
contributions may be regulated more strictly than expenditures
because of their potential for corruption.

The case was brought by Shaun McCutcheon, an Alabama man, and
the Republican National Committee. Mr. McCutcheon said he was
prepared to abide by contribution limits to individual
candidates and groups, which are currently $2,500 per election
to federal candidates, $30,800 per year to national party
committees, $10,000 per year to state party committees and
$5,000 per year to other political committees. But he said he
objected to separate overall two-year limits, currently $46,200
for contributions to candidates and $70,800 for contributions to
groups, arguing that they were unjustified and too low.

He said he had made contributions to 16 federal candidates in
recent elections and had wanted to give money to 12 more. He
said he had also wanted to give $25,000 to each of three
political committees established by the Republican Party. Each
set of contributions would have put him over the overall limits.

In September, a special three-judge federal court in Washington
upheld the overall limits, saying they were justified by the
need to prevent the circumvention of the basic limits.

�Although we acknowledge the constitutional line between
political speech and political contributions grows increasingly
difficult to discern,� Judge Janice Rogers Brown wrote for the
court, �we decline plaintiffs� invitation to anticipate the
Supreme Court�s agenda.�

In June, in a brief, unsigned 5-to-4 decision, the Supreme Court
affirmed the Citizens United ruling, summarily reversing a
decision of the Montana Supreme Court that had upheld a state
law limiting independent political spending by corporations.

�The question presented in this case is whether the holding of
Citizens United applies to the Montana state law,� the opinion
said. �There can be no serious doubt that it does.� Montana�s
arguments, the opinion continued, �either were already rejected
in Citizens United, or fail to meaningfully distinguish that
case.�

In 2006, in Randall v. Sorell, the Supreme Court struck down
Vermont�s contribution limits, the lowest in the nation, as
unconstitutional. Individuals and political parties were not
allowed to contribute more than $400 to a candidate for
statewide office over a two-year election cycle, including
primaries. In a brief concurrence, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.
said there was no reason to address the continuing validity of
Buckley v. Valeo in that case, suggesting that a later case
might present the question directly.

The latest case, McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, No.
12-536, may be that case.

The court also issued a pair of Fourth Amendment decisions on
Tuesday.

In one of them, the court ruled, 6 to 3, that the police may not
stop and detain people without probable cause in connection with
a search warrant once they had left the premises being searched.

The case, Bailey v. United States, No. 11-770, concerned Chunon
Bailey, a New York man who left an apartment in 2005 as it was
about to be searched. The police had a warrant to look for a
gun, which they ultimately found. They also followed Mr.
Bailey�s car for about a mile before stopping, handcuffing and
searching him.

Mr. Bailey was later convicted of gun and drug charges. He asked
lower courts to suppress evidence from the stop � statements he
made and a key linking him to the apartment � but they refused,
relying on Michigan v. Summers, a 1981 Supreme Court decision
allowing the detention of people in the immediate vicinity of
the place to be searched.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the majority, said none
of the interests justifying the detention of people at the scene
had allowed Mr. Bailey to be detained. People far from the scene
cannot endanger officers conducting the search or disrupt it, he
said. Nor could the interest in �preventing flight� be
stretched, he wrote, to �justify, for instance, detaining a
suspect who is 10 miles away, ready to board a plane.�

Justice Kennedy added that a detention in public gave rise to a
different sort of indignity than one inside a home.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia,
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan joined the
majority opinion.

In a second, unanimous ruling, the court decided the first of
two cases concerning dog sniffs on its docket this term, Florida
v. Harris, No. 11-817.

The case concerned a man, Clayton Harris, who was pulled over in
2006 near Bristol, Fla., for driving with an expired license
plate. A police dog named Aldo alerted his human partner to
contraband in Mr. Harris�s pickup truck.

Based on the alert, the officer searched the truck and found
ingredients for making methamphetamine.

The Florida Supreme Court suppressed the evidence, saying that
prosecutors had not adequately established the reliability of
Aldo�s nose through comprehensive documentation of his
performance in earlier searches. Justice Kagan said the dog�s
substantial training and certification sufficed.

�A sniff is up to snuff when it meets that test,� she wrote.

The case was argued in October on the same day as Florida v.
Jardines, No. 11-564, concerning dog sniffs outside a home, and
there was reason to think the two cases would be decided
together. But the justices apparently found the question in the
second case harder.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/20/us/politics/supreme-court-to-
hear-campaign-finance-case.html

--
Are you obligated as an armed civilian, to defend unarmed
liberals while you are both under fire by foreign agents of the
outlaw Obama administration?

No. Shoot the liberals immediately so they can't stab you in
the back while you are defending yourself, then return a
controlled rate of aimed fire. ��

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