The Future of Campaign Finance: NRSC v. FEC

By Eric Valcarce '27

---

On June 30, 2026, just months before the 2026 midterm elections, the Supreme Court issued a ruling that reshapes how money flows in federal campaigns. In a 6-3 decision along ideological lines, the Court struck down a 50-year-old limit on how much political parties can spend in direct coordination with their candidates. 

The case, National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Commission (NRSC v. FEC), asked whether Congress could cap coordinated party expenditures — spending by a party committee on a candidate's behalf, with the candidate's input — or whether those limits violated the First Amendment. (1) The Court’s majority opinion, written by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, held that they did. The majority reasoned that political spending is constitutionally protected speech and that limiting how much a party may spend in coordination with its own candidate serves no anticorruption interest that existing disclosure and earmarking rules do not already address. (2) 

Party committees can accept donations far exceeding what candidates can receive directly — and without coordination limits, those large contributions can now be spent in full coordination with a specific candidate's campaign, bypassing the contribution caps Congress put in place. (3) This ruling is not an isolated event. Rather, it is the latest step in a two-decade judicial sequence, running from Citizens United v. FEC (2010) through McCutcheon v. FEC (2014) and FEC v. Ted Cruz for Senate (2022), that has slowly dismantled congressional campaign finance protections. Each ruling has widened the channels through which large donors can reach candidates while narrowing what the Court considers actionable corruption.

Background: Citizens United and What It Built

NRSC v. FEC was not the first step in dismantling campaign finance law. For the majority of the 20th century, Congress imposed strict limits on corporate political spending, rooted in the belief that large concentrations of money posed a threat to electoral integrity. That architecture began to collapse in 2010.

In Citizens United v. FEC, the Supreme Court struck down a ban on corporate independent expenditures in a 5-4 decision, holding that political spending is a form of protected speech under the First Amendment. (4) Together with the D.C. Circuit’s subsequent decision in SpeechNow.org v. FEC, the ruling helped give rise to super PACs, outside groups that can raise and spend unlimited sums provided they do not formally coordinate with a candidate’s campaign. The consequences were immediate and dramatic. Outside spending in federal elections jumped from $144 million in 2008 to $4.2 billion in 2024. (5) Dark money — contributions routed through nonprofit organizations that are not required to disclose their donors — exceeded $1 billion in the 2024 presidential race alone. (6)

Citizens United established the First Amendment logic that the Court would later apply to coordinated party spending in NRSC v. FEC. In McCutcheon v. FEC (2014), the Court struck down aggregate contribution limits, further narrowing the legal definition of corruption to only the most direct quid pro quo exchanges. (7) In FEC v. Ted Cruz for Senate (2022), the Court struck down limits on candidate loan repayments, applying the same framework. (8) With each ruling, the remaining guardrails grew fewer. NRSC v. FEC removes one more.

The Ruling

The coordinated party expenditure limits struck down in NRSC v. FEC had been in place since the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) was enacted. For the 2026 cycle, those caps ranged from $130,600 to $4,071,800 for Senate candidates and $65,300 to $130,600 for House candidates, depending on the size of the state. (9) The limits existed to prevent a specific problem: a donor who wanted to route more money to a candidate than contribution limits allowed could give a large sum to the party committee, which would then spend it in coordination with that candidate's campaign.

The Supreme Court had addressed this exact concern in FEC v. Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee (Colorado II) in 2001, upholding the limits because coordinated party spending was, in the Court's words, "the functional equivalent of a contribution." (10) Justice Kavanaugh's majority opinion in NRSC v. FEC overruled Colorado II, holding that subsequent decisions — particularly McCutcheon — had already addressed the anti-circumvention rationale through earmarking and disclosure rules, making the coordinated spending caps an unconstitutional "prophylaxis upon prophylaxis." (11)

Justice Elena Kagan, joined by Justices Sotomayor and Jackson, dissented sharply. In her dissent, Kagan warned that the ruling would allow party committees to serve as a candidate's "checking account," enabling a single donor to route far more money toward a preferred candidate than individual contribution limits permit. (12) "For over half a century," Kagan wrote, "a federal statute has guarded against actual and apparent quid pro quo corruption in our political system by limiting the amount of money a donor can contribute to a candidate. But today, the Court rewrites the rules." (13)

The Donor Pass-Through Problem

The most immediate consequence of the ruling is what reform advocates call the donor pass-through mechanism. Under current law, an individual donor is capped at $3,500 per candidate per election — roughly $7,000 per cycle combining the primary and general elections. But that same donor can give significantly more to party committees. Through a joint fundraising committee (JFC), which splits a single large check among a national party committee and all 50 state party committees, a donor can route over $600,000 into the party system. (14) Those funds can now be spent in unlimited, direct coordination with a chosen candidate's campaign.

This is not a theoretical risk. According to OpenSecrets, on a single day in 2025, one of President Trump's joint fundraising committees sent nearly $1.5 million to 46 Republican Party committees across states and territories, each of which immediately routed those exact amounts back to the Republican National Committee. (15) Although such transfers were routine before the ruling, they now carry far greater implications: that money can now be spent in direct coordination with specific candidates without limit. 

The NRSC moved quickly to formalize this new reality. In a June 30 memo to campaigns, the committee announced it would end its traditional independent expenditure unit and shift entirely to coordinated spending developed directly with candidates, describing itself as "the most important investment vehicle in the 2026 cycle." (16) The memo advised campaigns to "preserve direct campaign dollars for where they're most valuable" and let the NRSC absorb costs through centralized coordination.

The Enforcement Vacuum

The ruling arrives at a moment of acute institutional weakness. The Federal Election Commission — the agency charged with enforcing campaign finance law — has been without a functioning quorum since April 30, 2025, when the departures of multiple commissioners left the agency with only two of its six seats filled. (17) By law, the FEC requires four commissioners to take any binding action, including issuing guidance, opening enforcement investigations, or conducting audits.

Without a quorum, the FEC cannot write the new rules the NRSC ruling urgently requires, cannot investigate potential violations of the earmarking and disclosure guardrails the majority relied upon, and cannot respond to the 195 pending enforcement matters already on its docket as of early 2026. (18) As former Republican FEC Commissioner Brad Smith noted, a violation that occurs in the summer of 2026 is "very unlikely to be headed to a successful prosecution before Election Day." (19) The ruling, in other words, lands in a regulatory vacuum.

2026 and Beyond

The practical impact of the ruling is not party-neutral, at least in the short term. As of June 2026, the Republican National Committee held $125.5 million in cash with no debt, while the Democratic National Committee reported $14.9 million in cash and $18.3 million in debt — the only national party committee carrying debt. (20) By increasing the value of party committee spending, the ruling may deepen an already significant financial disparity heading into November.

Beyond 2026, legal analysts warn that the ruling opens the door to further challenges against what remains of campaign finance law. Covington & Burling, one of the leading election law firms in the country, wrote that the decision "calls into question" limits on direct party contributions to candidates and potentially the ban on federal contractor contributions to super PACs. (21) Roman Martinez, appointed by the Court itself to defend the coordinated spending limits, warned at oral argument that a ruling against the caps would leave the Court "deluged with petitions" to dismantle other contribution limits next. (22)

Supporters of the ruling counter that empowering political parties is healthier for democracy than the current system, in which super PACs and dark money nonprofits — not accountable party institutions — dominate outside spending. Justice Kavanaugh himself expressed concern at oral argument that super PACs had supplanted parties with "negative effects on our constitutional democracy." (23) Proponents argue that party spending, unlike super PAC spending, is at least linked to disclosed donor contributions, making it more transparent than the dark money flows that have grown exponentially since Citizens United.

Conclusion

The ruling in NRSC v. FEC does not exist in isolation. It is the culmination of a judicial sequence — Citizens United, McCutcheon, Cruz, and now NRSC — that has removed the tools Congress put in place to limit the influence of large donors in federal elections. Each decision has applied the same logic: that the only constitutionally permissible justification for campaign finance restrictions is preventing explicit quid pro quo corruption, and that the remaining guardrails are sufficient to address that concern.

The practical result is a system in which an individual donor capped at $7,000 in direct giving to a candidate can route over $600,000 through a party committee, which can then spend every dollar of it in direct coordination with that candidate's campaign — with a paralyzed FEC unable to police the new landscape and more legal challenges already in the pipeline. Whether that system produces corruption the dissent warned of, or more accountable party politics the majority envisioned, the 2026 midterms will be the first test.

The question that campaign finance law has never fully resolved remains open: at what point does a donor's ability to spend in coordination with a candidate stop being protected speech and start being exactly what Congress built these limits to prevent? 

Endnotes

1. National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Commission, 609 U.S. ___ (2026).

2. Mayer Brown, Supreme Court Strikes Down Limits on Political Party Coordinated Expenditures, July 2026, https://www.mayerbrown.com/en/insights/publications/2026/07/supreme-court-strikes-down-limits-on-political-party-coordinated-expenditures.

3. Campaign Legal Center, Defending Limits on Coordinated Spending by Political Parties (NRSC, et al. v. FEC), https://campaignlegal.org/cases-actions/defending-limits-coordinated-spending-political-parties.

4. Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. 310 (2010).

5. OpenSecrets, How One Supreme Court Ruling Could “Supercharge” Joint Fundraising Committees, July 2026, https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2026/07/how-one-supreme-court-ruling-could-supercharge-joint-fundraising-committees.

6. Center for American Progress, Is the U.S. Supreme Court Preparing to Undermine Campaign Finance Reforms Again?, Dec. 2, 2025, https://www.americanprogress.org/article/is-the-u-s-supreme-court-preparing-to-undermine-campaign-finance-reforms-again/.

7. McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, 572 U.S. 185 (2014).

8. Federal Election Commission v. Ted Cruz for Senate, 596 U.S. 289 (2022).

9. Mayer Brown, Supreme Court Strikes Down Limits on Political Party Coordinated Expenditures (citing 91 Fed. Reg. 10393–94 (2026)).

10. Federal Election Commission v. Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee, 533 U.S. 431 (2001) (Colorado II).

11. Steptoe LLP, What Does the Supreme Court’s Latest Campaign Finance Decision Mean for the 2026 Midterm Elections Fundraising?, June 30, 2026, https://www.steptoe.com/en/news-publications/what-does-the-supreme-courts-latest-campaign-finance-decision-mean-for-the-2026-midterm-elections-fundraising.html.

12. The Daily Beast, Liberal Justices Raise Alarm on Corruption in Fiery Dissent, July 2026, https://www.thedailybeast.com/liberal-justices-raise-alarm-on-corruption-in-fiery-dissent/.

13. National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Commission, 609 U.S. ___ (2026) (Kagan, J., dissenting).

14. Campaign Legal Center, Defending Limits on Coordinated Spending by Political Parties (NRSC, et al. v. FEC).

15. OpenSecrets, How One Supreme Court Ruling Could “Supercharge” Joint Fundraising Committees, July 2026.

16. Washington Reporter, Exclusive: Supreme Court Ruling Supercharges NRSC’s Political Firepower Ahead of November, June 30, 2026, https://washingtonreporter.news/exclusive-supreme-court-ruling-supercharges-nrscs-political-firepower-ahead-of-november/.

17. CNN, Election Watchdog Loses Its Enforcement Powers as Trump Seeks to Exert More Control over Its Decisions, Apr. 30, 2025, https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/30/politics/federal-election-commissions-resignations-quorum.

18. Ashurst Perkins Coie, Supreme Court Strikes Down Political Party Coordinated Expenditure Limits: Implications for Campaign Finance and Political Spending, 2026, https://www.ashurstperkinscoie.com/en/insights/supreme-court-strikes-down-political-party-coordinated-expenditure-limits/.

19. Ibid.

20. Washington Reporter, Exclusive: Supreme Court Ruling Supercharges NRSC’s Political Firepower Ahead of November.

21. Covington & Burling LLP, Supreme Court Decision in National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Commission Empowers Political Parties, Calls Other Restrictions into Question, July 2, 2026, https://www.cov.com/en/news-and-insights/insights/2026/06/supreme-court-decision-in-national-republican-senatorial-committee-v-federal-election-commission-empowers-political-parties-calls-other-restrictions-into-question.

22. Ashurst Perkins Coie, Supreme Court Strikes Down Political Party Coordinated Expenditure Limits: Implications for Campaign Finance and Political Spending.

23. NPR, Supreme Court Strikes Down Limits on Political Party Spending, June 30, 2026, https://www.npr.org/2026/06/30/nx-s1-5827039/supreme-court-campaign-finance.