Republicans won a major campaign finance case at the Supreme Court on Tuesday, and Vice President J.D. Vance has a direct connection to how the challenge began.
In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court struck down federal limits on how much political parties can spend on campaign activities coordinated with their own candidates, USA Today reported. Those limits dated back to 1974, when Congress passed a series of post-Watergate campaign finance reforms intended to curb corruption and the appearance of corruption in federal elections.
The case began in Ohio in 2022, before Vance became vice president. At the time, he was running for the U.S. Senate and was still widely known as the author of “Hillbilly Elegy.” Vance, along with then-Ohio Republican Rep. Steve Chabot, challenged the rules, arguing that the spending limits violated the First Amendment’s protection of free speech.
The case, National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Commission, eventually reached the Supreme Court, where the majority sided with the Republican challengers.
“Held: FECA’s political-party coordinated-expenditure limits violate the First Amendment,” the court’s ruling stated.
The spending restrictions had previously been upheld by the Supreme Court in 2001, according to The Associated Press. But the legal and political environment around campaign finance has changed sharply since then, especially with the rise of super PACs.
The next opinion is in NRSC v. FEC, on campaign finance. The court holds that the Federal Election Campaign Act’s political-party coordinated-expenditure limits violate the First Amendment.https://t.co/9kMeYzuQZF
— SCOTUSblog (@SCOTUSblog) June 30, 2026
Republicans argued that super PACs, formally called Independent Expenditure-Only Committees, have taken on an outsized role in modern campaigns because they can raise and spend large amounts of money independently. Unlike political parties, they were not bound by the same coordinated spending limits. That, Republicans said, weakened the role of official political parties while allowing outside groups to become what they described as “shadow parties.”
USA Today reported that the GOP argued this shift had diminished the actual parties’ influence in elections.
Democrats, meanwhile, defended the limits as a protection for Americans who do not have the resources of major political donors. They argued that removing the restrictions could give wealthy donors even more influence over candidates and campaigns.
The Justice Department did not defend the law after President Donald Trump returned to office in 2025, USA Today noted. Because of that, the Supreme Court appointed another attorney to argue in favor of keeping the regulations in place.
Writing for the majority, Justice Brett Kavanaugh pointed to the long history of political parties operating without these limits before the 1974 reforms.
The US Supreme Court has again struck down campaign spending limits, this time rejecting federal restrictions on coordinated spending between political parties and their candidates on free speech grounds https://t.co/HFHkfHfxRx pic.twitter.com/6RMcEiUzSh
— Reuters Legal (@ReutersLegal) June 30, 2026
“For nearly 200 years after the ratification of the First Amendment, parties could spend freely to support their candidates during campaigns and could do so in coordination with the candidates,” Kavanaugh wrote. “Notably, no one suggests ‘that these elections were not functional or that they were marred by corruption.’”
The ruling drew immediate criticism from liberals on X, where opponents warned that the decision would increase the influence of money in politics.
The decision could have a significant effect on the coming midterm elections. According to USA Today, Republicans may be positioned to benefit more because the party’s committees are currently better funded than their Democratic counterparts. Reuters reported that the ruling comes as major Republican committees enter the November midterm cycle with a sizable cash advantage.
With control of Congress at stake and with the midterms set to shape the final two years of Trump’s presidency, the decision could give party committees more room to coordinate spending directly with candidates in some of the country’s most competitive races.
