Supreme Court Will Hear Challenge to Arizona's Matching Campaign Funds

Today the Supreme Court agreed to hear a First Amendment challenge to Arizona's "clean elections" system, which gives matching funds to participating candidates so they can keep up with spending favoring their opponents. Since the Court blocked those subsidies during this year's elections (by reinstating a lower court's injunction), the decision to hear the case is not surprising. It suggests that one widely discussed response to freer speech for unions and corporations—taxpayer-funded subsidies aimed at "leveling the playing field" by counteracting the impact of independent spending—may be just as constitutionally vulnerable as the restrictions the Court overturned in Citizens United.

As this Institute for Justice video concisely explains, Arizona's campaign financing system aims to make sure that no candidate enjoys an "unfair" advantage by attracting more contributions or independent support than his opponent. Hence a publicly funded candidate gets more money from the government not only when his opponent raises more but also when outside groups spend money in support of his opponent. The issue for the Court is whether such matching funds are constitutionally tantamount to the direct limits on spending it has long said violate the First Amendment.

I discussed the case in a column last June. I.J. has background here.