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Respondents Shrink Missouri Government PAC, a political action committee,and Zev David Fredman, a candidate for the 1998 Republican nomination forMissouri state auditor, filed suit, alleging that a Missouri statuteimposing limits ranging from $275 to $1,075 on contributions to candidatesfor state office violated their First and Fourteenth Amendment rights.Shrink Missouri gave Fredman $1,025 in 1997, and $50 in 1998, andrepresented that, without the statutory limitation, it would contributemore. Fredman alleged he could campaign effectively only with more generouscontributions than the statute allowed. On cross-motions for summaryjudgment, the District Court sustained the statute. Applying Buckley v.Valeo, 424 U. S. 1 (per curiam), the court found adequate support for thelaw in the proposition that large contributions raise suspicions ofinfluence peddling tending to undermine citizens' confidence in governmentintegrity. The court rejected respondents' contention that inflation sinceBuckley's approval of a federal $1,000 restriction meant that the statelimit of $1,075 for a statewide office could not be constitutional today.In reversing, the Eighth Circuit found that Buckley had articulated andapplied a strict scrutiny standard of review, and held that Missouri had todemonstrate that it had a compelling interest and that the contributionlimits at issue were narrowly drawn to serve that interest. TreatingMissouri's claim of a compelling interest in avoiding the corruption or theperception of corruption caused by candidates' acceptance of large campaigncontributions as insufficient by itself to satisfy strict scrutiny, thecourt required demonstrable evidence that genuine problems resulted fromcontributions in amounts greater than the statutory limits. It ruled thatthe State's evidence was inadequate for this purpose.

Held: Buckley is authority for comparable state limits on contributions tostate political candidates, and those limits need not be pegged to theprecise dollar amounts approved in Buckley. Pp. 5-18.

(a) The Buckley Court held, inter alia, that a Federal Election CampaignAct provision placing a $1,000 annual ceiling on independent expenditureslinked to specific candidates for federal office infringed speech andassociation guarantees of the First Amendment and the Equal ProtectionClause of the Fourteenth, but upheld other provisions limitingcontributions by individuals to any single candidate to $1,000 perelection. P. 5.

(b) In addressing the speech claim, the Buckley Court explicitly rejectedboth intermediate scrutiny for communicative action, see United States v.O'Brien, 391 U. S. 367, and the similar standard applicable to merely time,place, and manner restrictions, see, e.g., Adderley v. Florida, 385 U. S.39, and instead referred generally to "the exacting scrutiny required bythe First Amendment," 424 U. S., at 16. The Court then drew a line betweenexpenditures and contributions, treating expenditure restrictions as directrestraints on speech, id., at 19, but saying, in effect, that limitingcontributions left communication significantly unimpaired, id., at 20-21.The Court flagged a similar difference between the impacts of expenditureand contribution limits on association rights, id., at 22; see also id., at28, and later made that distinction explicit, e.g., Federal Election Comm'nv. Massachusetts Citizens for Life, Inc., 479 U. S. 238, 259-260. Thus,under Buckley's standard of scrutiny, a contribution limit involvingsignificant interference with associational rights could survive if theGovernment demonstrated that regulating contributions was a means "closelydrawn" to match a "sufficiently important interest," 424 U. S, at 25,though the dollar amount of the limit need not be "fine tun[ed]," id., at30. While Buckley did not attempt to parse distinctions between the speechand associational standards of scrutiny for contribution limits, the Courtmade clear that such restrictions bore more heavily on associational rightsthan on speech rights, and thus proceeded on the understanding that acontribution limitation surviving a claim of associational abridgementwould survive a speech challenge as well. The Court found the prevention ofcorruption and the appearance of corruption to be a constitutionallysufficient justification for the contribution limits at issue. Id., at25-28. Pp. 5-10.

(c) In defending its statute, Missouri espouses those same interests ofpreventing corruption and the appearance of it. Even without Buckley, therewould be no serious question about the legitimacy of these interests, whichunderlie bribery and antigratuity statutes. Rather, respondents take theState to task for failing to justify the invocation of those interests withempirical evidence of actually corrupt practices or of a perception amongMissouri voters that unrestricted contributions must have been exerting acovertly corrosive influence. The state statute is not void, however, forwant of evidence. The quantum of empirical evidence needed to satisfyheightened judicial scrutiny of legislative judgments will vary up or downwith the novelty and plausibility of the justification raised. Buckleydemonstrates that the dangers of large, corrupt contributions and thesuspicion that large contributions are corrupt are neither novel norimplausible. See 424 U. S., at 27, and n. 28. Respondents are wrong inarguing that this Court has "supplemented" its Buckley holding with a newrequirement that governments enacting contribution limits must demonstratethat the recited harms are real, not merely conjectural, a contention forwhich respondents rely principally on Colorado Republican Federal CampaignComm. v. Federal Election Comm'n, 518 U. S. 604. This Court has neveraccepted mere conjecture as adequate to carry a First Amendment burden, andColorado Republican deals not with a government's burden to justifycontribution limits, but with limits on independent expenditures bypolitical parties, which the principal opinion expressly distinguished fromcontribution limits. Id., at 615-618. In any event, this case does notpresent a close call requiring further definition of whatever the State'sevidentiary obligation may be. Although the record does not show that theMissouri Legislature relied on the evidence and findings accepted inBuckley, the evidence introduced by respondents or cited by the lowercourts in this action and a prior case involving a related ballotinitiative is enough to show that the substantiation of the congressionalconcerns reflected in Buckley has its counterpart in support of theMissouri law. Moreover, although majority votes do not, as such, defeatFirst Amendment protections, the statewide vote adopting the initiativeattested to the public perception that contribution limits are necessary tocombat corruption and the appearance thereof. A more extensive evidentiarydocumentation might be necessary if petitioners had made any showing oftheir own to cast doubt on the apparent implications of Buckley's evidenceand the record here. However, the nearest they come to challenging theseconclusions is their invocation of academic studies that are contradictedby other studies. Pp. 10-15.

(d) There is no support for respondents' various arguments that theMissouri limitations are so different in kind from those sustained inBuckley as to raise essentially a new issue about the adequacy of theMissouri statute's tailoring to serve its purposes. Here, as in Buckley,supra, at 21, there is no indication that those limits have had anydramatic adverse effect on the funding of campaigns and politicalassociations, and thus there is no showing that the limitations preventedcandidates from amassing the resources necessary for effective advocacy.Indeed, the District Court found that since the Missouri limits becameeffective, candidates for state office have been able to raise fundssufficient to run effective campaigns, and that candidates are still ableto amass impressive campaign war chests. The plausibility of theseconclusions is buttressed by petitioners' evidence that in the lastelection before the contributions became effective, 97.62 percent of allcontributors to candidates for state auditor made contributions of $2,000or less. Even assuming that the contribution limits affected respondentFredman's ability to wage a competitive campaign, a showing of one affectedindividual does not point up a system of suppressed political advocacy thatwould be unconstitutional under Buckley. The District Court's conclusionsand the supporting evidence also suffice to answer respondents' variantclaim that the Missouri limits today differ in kind from Buckley's owing toinflation since that case was decided. Respondents' assumption that Buckleyset a minimum constitutional threshold for contribution limits, which indollars adjusted for loss of purchasing power are now well above the linesdrawn by Missouri, is a fundamental misunderstanding of that case. TheCourt there specifically rejected the contention that $1,000, or any otheramount, was a constitutional minimum, and instead asked whether thecontribution limitation was so low as to impede the ability of candidatesto amass the resources necessary for effective advocacy. 424 U. S., at 21.Such being the test, the issue in subsequent cases cannot be truncated to anarrow question about the power of the dollar. Pp. 15-18.

Souter, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Rehnquist, C. J.,and Stevens, O'Connor, Ginsburg, and Breyer, JJ., joined. Stevens, J.,filed a concurring opinion. Breyer, J., filed a concurring opinion, inwhich Ginsburg, J., joined. Kennedy, J., filed a dissenting opinion.Thomas, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Scalia, J., joined.

Bossier Parish, Louisiana, a jurisdiction covered by §5 of the VotingRights Act of 1965, is thereby prohibited from enacting any change in a"voting qualification[,] prerequisite[,] standard, practice, or procedure"without first obtaining preclearance from either the Attorney General orthe District Court. When, following the 1990 census, the Bossier ParishSchool Board submitted a proposed redistricting plan to the AttorneyGeneral, she denied preclearance. The Board then filed this preclearanceaction in the District Court. Section 5 authorizes preclearance of aproposed voting change that "does not have the purpose and will not havethe effect of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race orcolor." Appellants conceded that the Board's plan did not have a prohibited"effect" under §5, since it was not "retrogressive," i.e., did notworsen the position of minority voters, see Beer v. United States, 425 U.S. 130, but claimed that it violated §5 because it was enacted for adiscriminatory "purpose." The District Court granted preclearance. Onappeal, this Court disagreed with the District Court's proposition that allevidence of a dilutive (but nonretrogressive) effect forbidden by §2was irrelevant to whether the Board enacted the plan with a retrogressivepurpose forbidden by §5. Reno v. Bossier Parish School Bd., 520 U. S.471, 486-487 (Bossier Parish I). This Court vacated and remanded forfurther proceedings as to the Board's purpose in adopting its plan, id., at486, leaving for the District Court the question whether the §5purpose inquiry ever extends beyond the search for retrogressive intent,ibid. On remand, the District Court again granted preclearance. Concluding,inter alia, that there was no evidence of discriminatory butnonretrogressive purpose, the court left open the question whether §5prohibits preclearance of a plan enacted with such a purpose.

1. The Court rejects the Board's contention that these cases are mooted bythe fact that the 1992 plan will never again be used because the nextscheduled election will occur in 2002, when the Board will have a new planin place based upon data from the 2000 census. In at least one respect, the1992 plan will have probable continuing effect: it will serve as thebaseline against which appellee's next voting plan will be evaluated forpreclearance purposes. Pp. 5-6.

2. In light of §5's language and Beer's holding, §5 does notprohibit preclearance of a redistricting plan enacted with a discriminatorybut nonretrogressive purpose. Pp. 7-20.

(a) In order to obtain preclearance, a covered jurisdiction must establishthat the proposed change "does not have the purpose and will not have theeffect of denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race orcolor." The covered jurisdiction bears the burden of persuasion on bothpoints. See, e.g., Bossier Parish I, supra, at 478. In Beer, the Courtconcluded that, in the context of a §5 vote-dilution claim, the phrase"abridging the right to vote on account of race or color" limited the term"effect" to retrogressive effects. 425 U. S., at 141. Appellants'contention that in qualifying the term "purpose," the very same phrase doesnot impose a limitation to retrogression, but means discrimination moregenerally, is untenable. See BankAmerica Corp. v. United States, 462 U. S.122, 129. Richmond v. United States, 422 U. S. 358, 378-379, distinguished.Appellants argue that subjecting both prongs to the same limitationproduces a purpose prong with a trivial reach, covering only "incompetentretrogressors." If this were true--and if it were adequate to justifygiving the very same words different meanings when qualifying "purpose" and"effect"--there would be instances in which this Court applied such aconstruction to the innumerable statutes barring conduct with a particular"purpose or effect," yet appellants are unable to cite a single case.Moreover, the purpose prong has value and effect even when it does notcover conduct additional to that of a so-called incompetent retrogressor:the Government need only refute a jurisdiction's prima facie showing that aproposed voting change does not have a retrogressive purpose, and need notcounter the jurisdiction's evidence regarding actual retrogressive effect.Although virtually identical language in §2(a) and the FifteenthAmendment has been read to refer not only to retrogression, but todiscrimination more generally, giving the language different meaning in§5 is faithful to the different context in which in which the term"abridging" is used. Appellants' reading would exacerbate the "substantial"federalism costs that the preclearance procedure already exacts, Lopez v.Monterey County, 525 U. S. 266, 282, perhaps to the extent of raisingconcerns about §5's constitutionality, see Miller v. Johnson, 515 U.S. 900, 926-927. The Court's resolution of this issue renders itunnecessary to address appellants' challenge to the District Court'sfactual conclusion that there was no evidence of discriminatory butnonretrogressive intent. Pp. 7-16.

(b) The Court rejects appellants' contention that, notwithstanding thatBossier Parish I explicitly "le[ft] open for another day" the questionwhether §5 extends to discriminatory but nonretrogressive intent, 520U. S., at 486, two of this Court's prior decisions have already reached theconclusion that it does. Dictum in Beer, 425 U. S., at 141, and holding ofPleasant Grove v. United States, 479 U. S. 462, distinguished. Pp. 16-20.

Scalia, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, Part II of which wasunanimous, and Parts I, III, and IV of which were joined by Rehnquist, C.J., and O'Connor, Kennedy, and Thomas, JJ. Thomas, J., filed a concurringopinion. Souter, J., filed an opinion concurring in part and dissenting inpart, in which Stevens, Ginsburg, and Breyer, JJ., joined. Stevens, J.,filed a dissenting opinion, in which Ginsburg, J., joined. Breyer, J.,filed a dissenting opinion.

* Together with No. 98-406, Price et al. v. Bossier Parish School Bd., alsoon appeal from the same court.

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U.S. Supreme Court Case Summaries by Date

U.S. Supreme Court Case Summaries - January 24, 2000