National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) v. Federal Election Commission (FEC) is a major campaign finance case before the Supreme Court this term. Oral arguments will occur on December 9, 2025 and the opinion is expected in the Spring 2026.
The case challenges caps on the amount of money political parties can spend in support of candidates when they coordinate those expenditures with a candidate’s campaign. The parties bringing the suit claim that recent Supreme Court cases and changes in fundraising practices have rendered these party coordinated spending limits unconstitutional.
This is an important case because it comes at a time when Americans’ concerns about money in politics have intensified. A 2025 Pew Research study found that “the role of money in politics” is the number one concern of Americans. A lack of action on this issue has left citizens with a dismal view of our political landscape. NRSC v. FEC is the latest example of how we got here: the Supreme Court, not Congress or the States, has taken over campaign finance policy in America.
The central question before the Court in NRSC v. FEC is whether the coordinated spending limits violate the First Amendment. For the past 50 years, the Supreme Court has treated all campaign finance regulations as potential First Amendment violations. This move – treating campaign finance as a First Amendment problem – put the Court in the position of determining whether, in its view, spending limits violate the free speech interests of those spending the money.
American Promise has no opinion on whether the party coordinated spending limits challenged in NRSC v. FEC should be struck down or not. We are asking a larger question: who should decide whether and how to regulate money in American elections? If asked, the Framers of the Constitution would have answered: “We the people.”
For the first two hundred years of American history, elected representatives in Congress and State legislatures – those accountable to the people – set the guardrails for political spending in U.S. elections. That system changed in the 1976 case, Buckley v. Valeo, when the Supreme Court ruled, for the first time, that limits on spending in elections are limits on speech under the First Amendment. But nothing in the text of the First Amendment or the Founding Era understanding of free speech supports the Buckley precedent that election spending equals speech. The Framers of the Constitution would have viewed spending money as one step removed from the natural right of expression secured by the First Amendment. They left the slew of policy questions regarding how to finance elections to legislatures – the representative bodies best suited to resolve them.
NRSC v. FEC is one more in a long line of cases where the judiciary will get to decide campaign finance policy based on the flawed foundation of Buckley. Rules about our elections should be determined by voters and their elected representatives – not unelected federal judges. That’s why American Promise is working to advance a constitutional amendment that will return this power to where it belongs: with the voters.
Twenty-three states have already called on Congress to introduce the amendment, or one like it. You can help by signing the American Promise Citizen Pledge.
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