Federal Election Commission v. National Conservative Political Action Committee

In 1971 Congress passed two campaign finance reform laws, the Presidential Election Campaign Fund Act (FECA) and the Presidential Election Campaign Finance Act (PECFA), to address spiraling campaign costs. The acts set limits on campaign spending, required disclosure of contributors, and established a public funding system. Amendments in 1974 created the Federal Election Commission (FEC) to enforce provisions of both acts.

The Supreme Court ruled in Buckley v. Valeo (1976) that parts of FECA were unconstitutional. The Court upheld limitations on contributions by individuals to political organizations but ruled that spending restrictions by FECA on political committees were unconstitutional if the committees operated independently of candidates or the candidates' election committees. By finding that such limits infringed on freedom of speech, the Court wrote, "[V]irtually every means of communicating ideas in today's mass society requires the expenditure of money." The opinion equated free speech with the spending of money to promote political views. Chief Justice Rehnquist wrote,

A restriction on the amount of money a person or group can spend on political communication during a campaign necessarily reduces the quantity of expression by restricting the number of issues discussed, the depth of their exploration, and the size of the audience reached.

In essence, this ruling legalized independent expenditures. Similarly the Court, in First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti (1978), noted that spending to express political views "is the type of speech indispensable to decision making in a democracy."

Amendments to FECA in 1979 exempted from campaign spending limits certain monies given to parties rather than individual candidates. The money, called "soft money" in this case, could only be used for specific purposes, such as volunteer activities, voter registration efforts, and for campaign materials. This money can not go directly to specific candidates or to the candidates' election committees.

As an unexpected outcome of these campaign finance reforms in the 1970s, political action committees, more commonly called PACs, burst on the national scene. PACs are formed by various corporations, labor groups, and other special interests to influence elections and lobby Congress and the administration for favors. PACs operate independently of political parties or candidate election committees. Given the Supreme Court rulings and "soft money" amendments, PACs quickly seized the opportunity to influence elections while legally avoiding spending limitations. Some special interest PACs are called "ideological" PACs because they primarily promote specific ideas or beliefs. With the rise of the New Right political movement, two ideological PACs, the National Conservative Political Action Committee (NCPAC) and Fund for a Conservative Majority (FCM), rapidly gained prominence promoting conservative political doctrine.