Federal appeals court ruling on Montana campaign limits may lead to U.S. Supreme Court revisiting Citizens United

The Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals executed an end-run on the U.S. Supreme Court 2010 Citizens United ruling in upholding a Montana law that established limits on political contributions. The Supreme Court ruled that evidence of trading money for votes was need to justify contribution limits, but the Ninth Circuit came up with a more lenient standard citing evidence in Montana of a legislator telling others to vote a certain way to keep contributions flowing from the insurance lobby. Ninth Circuit conservative judges wrote a vigorous dissent with the expectation that the Supreme Court will once again take up the issue and throw out all limits based on First Amendment rights. (San Francisco Chronicle, May 3, 2018, by Bob Egelko)

The conservatives said the Supreme Court required evidence of quid pro quo corruption and the Montana insurance lobby instance fell short of that. Ninth Circuit judges in favor of upholding limits replied that the Supreme Court never adopted the stricter quid pro quo test, “The evidentiary standard established by the Supreme Court requires that a state need only demonstrate a risk of quid pro quo corruption or its appearance that is neither conjectural nor illusory.” (Constitutional Law Prof Blog, May 3, 2018, by Steven D. Schwinn)