Supreme Court Strikes Down Political Party Coordinated Expenditure Limits: Implications for Campaign Finance and Political Spending

Key takeaways

• A little over four months before the 2026 midterm elections, in National Republican Senatorial Committee v. Federal Election Commission (NRSC v. FEC), the Supreme Court of the United States held that national political party committees may spend unlimited funds in coordination with their candidates.
• The opinion strikes down the limits on the direct, coordinated support the parties may provide their nominees for U.S. House of Representatives, U.S. Senators, and president, largely removing any remaining incentive for parties to spend through independent expenditure programs.
• While the parties are now free to spend unlimited amounts in coordination with their nominees, they remain limited in what they may raise, a distinction that preserves the role of Super PACs and other outside groups. The Court also repeatedly emphasized the vitality of the “base limits” affecting what donors may give federal candidates directly.

The NRSC v. FEC decision comes at a time of particular uncertainty regarding the laws governing election-related spending when many factors that could affect the midterm elections remain unsettled. The Federal Election Commission currently lacks a quorum, which means it cannot issue binding guidance or take enforcement action. Multiple cases are pending in federal district court on other aspects of campaign spending—for example, the extent to which section 501(c)(4) social welfare organizations may spend funds to intervene in elections, whether joint fundraising committees authorized by candidates and their parties may run advertisements urging a candidate’s election outside normal contribution limits, and whether Super PACs may coordinate their canvassing and other non-communication activities with candidates. The 2026 election cycle is unlikely to provide settled answers to any of these questions, which means that the parties will take maximum advantage of the Court decision, while other regulated entities make opportunity and risk-based decisions based on current law.

What the case is about

NRSC v. FEC involved the limits on how much a political party may spend in coordination with its candidates. One practical issue the decision raises is which entities have a competitive advantage in running political advertising. Generally, ad spenders compete on three different planes: (1) efficacy of messaging, (2) fundraising, and (3) costs. The campaigns themselves may know best what messaging and media work for them, and they have access to reduced rates for broadcast television and radio time. But they must raise money under strict contribution limits, which the Court did not question in its decision. Political party committees have a good sense of what their candidates need generally, but if they want to pay for the hardest-hitting “express advocacy” ads (explicitly telling the audience to vote for or against a candidate), until now they ordinarily (with limited exceptions) have had to pay for those ads through “independent expenditures”—uninformed by nonpublic campaign information. They are also subject to limits on contributions received and do not have the same access to reduced rates for television and radio. Other nonprofits, like Super PACs and 501(c)(4)s, can raise money from corporations and individuals without limit, but they generally cannot receive any strategic nonpublic information from candidates or parties to inform their advertising. Nor do they have access to reduced broadcast rates.

Congress created party coordinated expenditure limits in 1974 as part of the post-Watergate series of contribution and spending caps, allowing national and state party committees to spend fixed amounts in support of their candidates.[1] Now codified at 52 U.S.C. § 30116(d) and long known as the “441a(d) limits,” the party spending caps endured for five decades, even as many other contribution and spending limits fell away. These caps allowed a national party committee to pay bills of up to more than $6 million dollars in a large-state Senate race like Texas (91 Fed. Reg. 10,393, 10,394 (Mar. 3, 2026)). After Citizens United v. FEC,[2] Super PACs and nonprofit organizations became able to raise and spend unlimited funds on independent expenditures in these same races.

Following multiple unsuccessful Republican attempts to assert a First Amendment right for parties to spend unlimited amounts in coordination with their candidates, the NRSC and NRCC, joined by then Senate candidate J.D. Vance and then Representative Steve Chabot, sued the FEC in the Southern District of Ohio, challenging the party coordinated expenditure limits both facially and as applied to communications.[3] The en banc U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, in what the Supreme Court would describe as “a series of insightful opinions,” voiced doubt about the limits' continued vitality while leaving them in place.[4]

The plaintiffs petitioned the Supreme Court for review and made three main arguments: first, that the current limits differ materially from those the Court upheld previously; second, that recent cases from the Roberts Court, principally McCutcheon v. FEC [5] and FEC v. Cruz,[6] demand narrow tailoring to the sole permissible governmental interest in preventing quid pro quo corruption; and third, that no evidence proves that unlimited coordinated party spending results in quid pro quo corruption.[7] The case arrived at the Supreme Court in an unusual posture: after the plaintiffs sought review, the FEC lost its quorum, and the U.S. Department of Justice under President Trump reversed its position on the limits.[8] A Court-appointed amicus and the three Democratic national party committees defended the limits before the Supreme Court.[9]

What the court did

In a 6-3 decision, the Court struck down the coordinated party expenditure limits, holding that they violated the First Amendment. The Court said that there was only one legitimate government interest sufficient to support for restricting campaign finances: restricting quid pro quo corruption or its appearance. The Court held that the party coordinated expenditure limits were disproportionate, unnecessary, and not narrowly tailored to serve this government interest.

The Court found that other current provisions of the law are sufficient to meet this interest. Assuming the continued vitality of the “base limits” on the amounts of contributions that may be given to candidates, the Court said that anti-earmarking restrictions and disclosure requirements, taken together, would prevent circumvention of these limits. The Court said further that contributions to political parties presented a risk of quid pro quo corruption that was too attenuated to support the coordinated expenditure limits. The Court said that the mere expectation or hope that the party might spend in support of a particular candidate was not enough to create an actionable risk of quid pro quo corruption or its appearance. The Court said also that a majority of states allow parties to make coordinated expenditures in support of their nominees to nonfederal office and that no evidence of corruption had materialized.

The dissent questioned whether the majority opinion correctly understood the effects of modern political fundraising practices. It focused at length on joint fundraising committees and candidates’ ability through these committees to raise large sums for the parties that could then be converted into support for their campaigns. The invalidation of the party spending limits, the dissent contended, would effectively allow donors to circumvent the candidate base limits through party fundraising and spending. This, the dissent argued, raises the risk of both actual and apparent quid pro quo corruption.

What the decision means

National parties

The Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) permits national parties to financially support their candidates in three ways: direct contributions to the candidate that are generally subject to a $5,000 per election limit;[10] unlimited independent expenditures, subject to restrictions on interacting with the candidate’s campaign; and coordinated expenditures. The now-invalidated coordinated expenditure limits allowed parties to pay bills for their Senate nominees up to a combined $261,200 to $8,143,600, depending on the state’s voting age population; a combined $261,200 for House nominees running in states with only one representative; and a combined $130,600 for all other House nominees.

The Court’s decision now allows party committees to make unlimited coordinated expenditures in support of their nominees. This portends a sea change for party spending. There may be a shift from spending on general party-building activities to spending on advertisements in support of candidates in hotly contested races.

Parties may sharpen their fundraising efforts to reflect this new spending landscape. Citing the party’s coordinated work on a critical race may prove an effective fundraising strategy with donors. However, as the Court emphasized, when a donor gives to a national party committee and earmarks their contribution for a clearly identified candidate, the contribution counts against the donor’s limit to the candidate (52 U.S.C. § 30102(b); 11 C.F.R. § 102.8). Thus, while the decision creates significant new strategic and fundraising opportunities for national parties, it will increase compliance burdens also. The Court indicated as much when it pointed out the potential for enforcement of the anti-earmarking rules.

State parties

State parties will also be permitted to make unlimited coordinated expenditures in support of their federal candidates. The Court’s opinion suggests, but the case does not say outright, that this same outcome would hold in nonfederal elections. With the federal party coordinated expenditure limits now invalid, spending between national and state party committees may become less uniform and more fragmented. Candidates not assured of national party financial support may turn to their state parties for coordinated spending, as they do now for volunteer exempt activities like slate cards, sample ballots, and campaign materials.

Practical constraints may limit the extent to which state parties make coordinated expenditures. First, state parties are subject to the same anti-earmarking rules as the national parties. Second, state parties have a competitive advantage in being able to mail at lower nonprofit rates and so often devote substantial resources to mail.[11] However, Postal Service rules, which the Court’s decision does not discuss, continue to restrict the extent of candidate involvement in mail sent at nonprofit bulk rates.

Under the Postal Reorganization Act of 1978, state party committees may take advantage of a special bulk nonprofit mailing permit (39 U.S.C. § 3626(e)). USPS rules bar eligible organizations from lending that privilege to another person or organization and restrict its use in cooperative mailings—mailings produced jointly by multiple organizations.[12] As a result, a state party may not pass its discounted mailing status to a candidate committee through a collaborative mailing. While state parties may use nonprofit bulk rates for mail that supports a candidate, the party must retain control over the mailing decision and content. Thus, while the state party has a competitive advantage to pay for mail, and while the Court’s decision effectively removes restrictions on national party funding and requirements for volunteer involvement, there will still remain some practical curbs on campaign control.

Donors

While the decision gives the parties a competitive advantage versus other spenders, which is that they may spend unlimited funds in coordination with candidates while others may not, it is unlikely substantially to affect donor decisions. The parties have already been able to spend unlimited funds in direct candidate support through their independent expenditure programs. While prudent donors seeking to maximize the utility of their contributions might give to the candidate, national party, and state party first, they will still have a strong incentive to give to Super PACs, which can earmark their funds for independent expenditures in a particular race. And donors must be alert to a critical compliance distinction: While they may earmark contributions to a Super PAC to make independent expenditures for a specific candidate, they may not earmark contributions to a party committee to make coordinated expenditures for that same candidate. Donors will want to manage their communications when giving to ensure compliance with these contrasting rules. The Court’s opinion can be read to encourage enforcement of the anti-earmarking restrictions, to which the donors are themselves subject.

Super PACs

The decision does not diminish the role of Super PACs in federal elections, although it bemoans their rise at the expense of the parties. It affects what the parties may spend but not what they may raise. It leaves in place Citizens United v. FEC’s core holding, which is that non-party, non-candidate groups may raise unlimited funds to make independent expenditures; the political parties may not.[13] The Court affirmed that “Super PACs and other outside groups ... have a First Amendment right to receive and spend unlimited money to support their independent political speech.” Thus, Super PACs will continue to enjoy a competitive advantage in raising unlimited funds, including funds from corporations and labor unions. Super PACs may also work with candidates and parties on field programs not involving public communications under a 2024 FEC advisory opinion, although a lawsuit filed in May 2026 seeks to vacate that opinion.[14]

501(c)(4)s

The Court's decision does not disturb the structural features that make politically active 501(c)(4) social welfare organizations attractive to donors: the ability to raise and spend funds without generally disclosing their funding sources and the freedom to spend independently without regard to FECA's contribution or coordination limits, provided that influencing  elections does not become the organization's primary purpose.[15] The permissible scope of that political activity, however, remains the subject of active litigation. In Freedom Path, Inc. v. IRS, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia held that the IRS's facts-and-circumstances test and its standard for determining an organization's “primary” activity are unconstitutionally vague.[16] The court declined to supply a replacement test and instead directed the parties to propose standards rooted in the statutory and regulatory scheme and in constitutional principles. The “primary purpose” test remains the statutory standard, but the Freedom Path litigation has cast doubt on how—and whether—the IRS can enforce it (Id.). Until the IRS or the courts take further action, 501(c)(4)s retain considerable practical latitude to fund political advertising and engage in other political activity, though uncertainty remains about what standard will ultimately govern.

Companies

In the short term, corporations should expect that the national party committees will seek maximum contributions from their connected PACs to increase the amount of money the parties can spend on coordinated ads, although corporate PACs remain subject to the same anti-earmarking restrictions as other donors. Each of the two political parties has three national committees: one supporting House candidates, one supporting Senate candidates, and one supporting presidential candidates. For multicandidate PACs, that amount is $15,000 per year for each party committee’s principal account (11 C.F.R. § 110.2(c)). 

The decision will give party committees two significant advantages: access to direct input and messaging from the candidates they would like to support, and likely access to the lowest unit charge for television and radio. But they will be competing for airtime and attention against super PACs and nonprofits like 501(c)(4)s. An increase in party coordinated spending is likely to drive up solicitations and demand for corporate giving to these other entities

While Super PACs and 501(c)(4)s must spend their ad money independently of candidates and so must develop their own messaging, they have their own tremendous advantage: the ability to take unlimited corporate dollars. An increase in volume and depth of candidate-driven ad spending will likely require these other entities to spend even more on ads in order for their messages to break through. Corporations can therefore expect solicitations for these entities to increase almost immediately. But corporate donors, too, will need to take care to avoid earmarking their funds for specific candidates.

Joint fundraising committees

An emerging development during the 2024 election cycle was the growth in advertising spending by joint fundraising committees authorized by candidates and national party committees. This structure allowed candidate-sponsored entities to leverage party funds for advertisements that did not count against the coordinated expenditure limits because they were fundraising expenses for the joint committees. The Court’s invalidation of the coordinated expenditure limits removes a key driver of this trend. Parties and candidates may retain incentives to fund advertising through joint fundraising committees in certain circumstances. Joint fundraising committees may include party convention, headquarters, and legal accounts, which may accept contributions at three times the standard limits (11 C.F.R. § 102.17). However, a lawsuit filed by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia challenging the practice of joint fundraising committee advertising was stayed pending the NRSC decision and is now likely to proceed. Whether the plaintiff wins or not, the Court’s ruling could discourage the practice and encourage parties to pursue the more straightforward path of unlimited coordinated expenditures under the Supreme Court’s decision.

As both the majority and the dissent indicated, joint fundraising committees will continue to serve a more basic function: offering candidates a relatively safe way to raise for their campaigns and their parties at the same time, without triggering earmarked contributions but while having a sure way to know what they have raised for the parties when seeking coordinated expenditures later. Joint fundraising committees have long been a key feature of marquee races, and candidates may seek to expand their use. The dissent’s discussion of joint fundraising committees may motivate campaign reform proponents to encourage scrutiny of these committees’ operations and the ultimate use of their funds.

Broadcast stations

Candidate committees retain their distinct advantages as television and radio ad buyers. Broadcast stations must afford federal candidates reasonable access and sell them airtime at the lowest unit charge (LUC) during the 45 days before a primary and the 60 days before a general election (47 U.S.C. § 315; 47 CFR § 73.1942). The FCC has long held that LUC provisions apply both to candidates and to their authorized committees, including joint fundraising committees.[17] As noted above, a lawsuit challenging the practice of joint fundraising committee advertising is pending in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and may affect the viability of this approach.

Following the Court’s decision, party committees will likely curtail their independent expenditure programs in favor of coordinated buys, which previous FCC guidance indicates would be entitled to the LUC (Id. at 2).

However, the finite supply of broadcast advertising inventory, combined with stations' obligation to honor candidate rate and access requirements, may intensify competition and pricing pressure for non-candidate buyers. Digital, streaming, and connected-television platforms, which fall largely outside the FCC's regulatory jurisdiction, remain governed primarily by their own political advertising policies and are likely to continue absorbing an increasing share of total political advertising expenditures.

The Federal Election Commission

The FEC lost its quorum on April 30, 2025. Although the Commission requires four votes to take most official actions, it currently has only two sitting commissioners. The absence of a quorum prevents the FEC from issuing advisory opinions to clarify the law or from initiating or resolving enforcement matters. On February 11, 2026, the president nominated two Republican commissioners whose confirmation would restore the quorum. As of the date of this update, the Senate has not acted on the nominations.

[1] See Federal Election Campaign Act Amendments of 1974, Pub. L. 93-443 § 101(a), 88 Stat. 1264 (1974), codified at 52 U.S.C. § 30116(d).

[2] See Citizens United v. FEC, 558 U.S. 310 (2010).

[3] NRSC v. FEC, 712 F. Supp. 3d 1017 (S.D. Ohio 2024).

[4] NRSC v. FEC, 117 F.4th 389 (6th Cir. 2024).

[5] McCutcheon v. FEC, 572 U.S. 185 (2014).

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

[7] Brief for Petitioner, NRSC v. FEC, No. 24-621 (U.S. filed Aug. 21, 2025).

[8] Brief for Federal Respondents, NRSC v. FEC, No. 24-621 (U.S. filed Aug. 21, 2025).

[9] Brief for Intervenor-Respondents, NRSC v. FEC, No. 24-621 (U.S. filed Sept. 29, 2025).

[10] The national parties may contribute up to $62,000 to senate candidates under a separate, special limit. See 52 U.S.C. § 30116(h).

[11] This is due in part to FEC rules permitting them, in some circumstances, to pay for volunteer-distributed campaign materials, including candidate mailings, without those costs being treated as contributions or expenditures. See 11 C.F.R. §§ 100.87, 100.147.

[12] See U.S. Postal Service Publication 417, § 5-1.

[13] See Citizens United v. FEC, 558 U.S. 310 (2010).

[14] See Complaint, Campaign Legal Center v. FEC, No. 1:26-cv-1559 (D.D.C 2026); see also FEC Advisory Op. 2024-01 (Texas Majority PAC).

[15] See, e.g., 26 U.S.C. § 501(c)(4); Treas. Reg. Sec. 1.501(c)(4)-1(a)(2)(i), (ii); Treas. Reg. Sec. 1.6033-2(a)(2)(ii)(F), as modified by T.D. 9898, 85 Fed. Reg. 31,959-01 et seq. (May 28, 2020).

[16] Freedom Path, Inc. v. Internal Revenue Serv., 805 F.Supp. 3d 329 (D.D.C. 2025).

[17] See, e.g., FCC Public Notice on Entitlement to Lowest Unit Charge, DA 26-300 (Mar. 30, 2026).