When “Too Much Money” Meets the First Amendment

Xylee Alvarez

December 2025

Why NRSC v. FEC Feels Less About Campaign Finance and More About Judicial Unease

The Supreme Court on Tuesday had to confront a question that one can never seem fully comfortable answering: how much political money is too much before it stops being speech and starts being distortion? Throughout the oral argument, doctrine, precedent, and silence were pulling in all different directions. 

The case centers on a provision of federal campaign finance law that limits how much a national political party committee can spend in coordination with its own candidates. The National Republican Senatorial Committee argues that these coordinated spending caps violate the First Amendment because they restrict political speech. Their position seems very familiar. Money enables speech, parties are political speakers, and limiting spending limits expression. It seems simple, but it is quite far from it, leaving the decision of this court quite indefinitive. 

Throughout the oral arguments, the hesitance of some Justices was quite interesting, even when asking questions that aligned with existing precedent. It seemed like there was this underlying tension, considering the fact that the Court has spent years expanding protections for political spending, but coordinated party spending feels different. It’s not a random individual donor. It’s a party working directly with its candidate, pouring massive resources into a race, and that proximity made some Justices visibly uneasy, as their silence spoke volumes.

Justice Kagan, in particular, pressed on the real-world consequences of striking down these limits, not in an alarmist way but in a realistic way. Her questions felt very grounded in practical reality rather than abstract theory. What happens to anti-corruption safeguards when coordination limits disappear? Meanwhile, other Justices, like Justice Gorsuch and Justice Barrett, remained quite silent, with Justice Amy Coney Barrett asking only one question. Other Justices appeared rather torn between loyalty to precedent and the nagging suspicion that unlimited coordinated spending might fundamentally reshape elections in ways the Court cannot fully control once unleashed. And that is exactly where the emotional undercurrent of this case lives. This was not a courtroom buzzing with confidence. It was cautious and almost weary at times. The First Amendment looming over everything makes things feel heavy and uncompromising. 

Personally, I find this case frustrating in the way only Supreme Court cases can be. I understand the NRSC’s arguments. Political parties do exist to win elections; telling them how much they can help their own candidates feels somewhat counterintuitive. However, I think the feeling that pretending money is just “speech” and nothing more is extremely dishonest. Money amplifies. It overwhelms. It can tilt playing fields long before voters even step into a booth. The Court knows this; it's heard in their pauses, questions, and the carefully worded hypotheticals that are prancing around the obvious.

The outcome of this case feels very cautious. It feels like that because the Court has accepted that campaign finance law may never stop being a constitutional gamble. Either way, this case made one thing clear to me: when money, politics, and the First Amendment collide, even the Supreme Court sounds unsure where the safe landing is. That said, the Court's decisions are difficult to predict, but I expect it will rule 7-2 in favor of the FEC.