NRSC v. FEC: Oral Argument

Case Summary:Case Summary: NRSC v. FEC (National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Commission) arises from a 2022 lawsuit in which the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the National Republican Congressional Committee, then‑Senator J.D. Vance, and then‑Representative Steve Chabot challenged federal limits on how much national party committees can spend in coordinated expenditures with their own candidates under 52 U.S.C. § 30116(d). They filed in the Southern District of Ohio under FECA’s special review provision, which required the district court to certify the constitutional questions directly to the Sixth Circuit sitting en banc; that court upheld the coordinated‑expenditure limits against facial and as‑applied First Amendment challenges, after which the plaintiffs petitioned for certiorari and the Supreme Court agreed to review whether those coordinated party‑expenditure caps violate the free‑speech and association rights of political parties and candidates. The issue before the Supreme Court was whether the Federal Election Campaign Act’s coordinated‑expenditure limits for national political party committees—52 U.S.C. § 30116(d)’s caps on how much a national party can spend in coordination with its own candidates violate the First Amendment rights to free speech and association of parties and candidates, either on their face or as applied to the plaintiffs