Citizens United Case Exercise

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Citizens United Exercise This case involved a nonprofit corporation named Citizens United who planned to create several films and run commercials documenting Hillary Clinton. Citizens United wanted to air the movie “through video-on-demand”, but FEC(Federal Election Commission) argued that the film aimed only to discredit Hillary Clinton and should not be allowed because it’s classified as a form of “electioneering communication” because it was made within 30 days of a primary election and publicly distributed. The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA) of 2002 stated that “federal law prohibits corporations and unions from using their general treasury funds to make independent expenditures for speech that is an “electioneering communication” or for speech that expressly advocates the election or defeat of a candidate”; which the Supreme Court used to make its decision in Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce. The decision was made that “political speech may be banned based on the speaker’s corporate identity”. The Court also kept its previous decision from the Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce case and applied it to McConnell v. Federal Election Common. Citizens United wanted to prevent the application of BCRA onto their film Hillary so they tried an injunction FEC, but the Supreme Court was like really man…We…show more content…
They reasoned that there were still contribution limits, but they couldn’t expand that to spending. Parts of The Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 were deemed unconstitutional because it limited spending on media advertisement, which meant that spending was a part of speech; therefore protected by First Amendment and applicable to Citizens United. The Court decided that it’s okay for corporations to spend as much money as they wanted to convince voters, but they still can’t donate

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