Randall v. Sorrell
The Supreme Court struck down Vermont's 1997 campaign finance law, ruling that its limits on how much candidates could spend on their own races were flatly barred by the Court's 1976 decision in Buckley v. Valeo, and that its unusually low contribution limits were not carefully tailored to the state's anti-corruption goals.
The ruling reaffirms that spending caps on candidates violate free-speech rights, while also showing that even contribution limits -- long treated as easier to defend -- can be struck down if they are set so low that they choke off effective campaigning, particularly for challengers and political parties.
“We consequently agree with the District Court that the Act’s contribution limits “would reduce the voice of political parties” in Vermont to a “whisper.””
The plurality's conclusion that Vermont's contribution limits crippled political parties' ability to support candidates.
How it got here: A federal trial court struck down the expenditure limits and party-contribution limits but upheld the rest; the Second Circuit upheld all contribution limits and sent the expenditure limits back for more fact-finding; both sides sought Supreme Court review.
The Case in Depth
What happened
In 1997 Vermont's Legislature passed Act 64, one of the nation's strictest campaign finance laws, capping both how much candidates for state office could spend on their campaigns and how much individuals, political committees, and parties could contribute to them. Candidates, voters, and political party organizations sued state officials, arguing the law's spending and contribution caps violated their free-speech and associational rights under the First Amendment.
The question before the Court
Could Vermont cap both how much candidates for state office spend on their own campaigns and how much individuals, parties, and groups give to those campaigns?
The Court's answer
No — the Court ruled that Vermont could not impose either kind of limit as written. On candidate spending caps, the plurality said Buckley v. Valeo already settled that such limits violate the First Amendment because they directly cut into how much a candidate can communicate with voters, and nothing about Vermont's law or record justified departing from that 30-year-old precedent.
On contribution limits, the answer was more nuanced: the Constitution generally allows limits on what people or groups can give to candidates, but Vermont's limits were so low — the lowest in the nation, applied equally to political parties, uncorrected for inflation, and reaching even volunteers' incidental expenses — that they crossed the line from permissible regulation into an unconstitutional burden on political participation, especially for challengers trying to compete with incumbents.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
States that want to control the cost of political campaigns cannot simply cap what candidates spend, and even contribution limits meant to fight corruption have a constitutional floor. Vermont had to scrap Act 64's limits, and other states with similarly aggressive campaign finance laws now have a clearer, if still fuzzy, sense of how low is too low.
What changes now
This is a final merits decision, though the case was sent back for further proceedings consistent with the ruling. Vermont's Legislature is free to rewrite Act 64's contribution limits -- for example, raising the dollar amounts, indexing them for inflation, or carving out volunteer expenses and party contributions -- but it cannot revive the expenditure caps in their earlier form. The decision also leaves open how future courts should identify when contribution limits are low enough to trigger closer scrutiny.
What this does not decide
The plurality's stare decisis discussion addressed only whether to overrule Buckley's rule on candidate expenditure limits, not its separate framework for evaluating contribution limits generally. The Court also did not reach the constitutionality of Act 64's presumption that certain party spending is coordinated with a candidate, since striking down the contribution limits made that question unnecessary to decide.
Concurrences and dissents
Concurrence in part — Justice Alito
Justice Alito joined the plurality's opinion except for the two sections rejecting the argument that Buckley should be overruled. He reasoned that respondents' primary argument accepted Buckley rather than asking to overrule it, and that respondents' failure to seriously engage stare decisis doctrine meant the Court did not need to address whether Buckley could be reconsidered at all.
Concurrence — Justice Kennedy
Justice Kennedy agreed both sets of limits were unconstitutional but wrote separately to express deep skepticism about the entire body of campaign finance law the Court has built, arguing there is no principled way to say why $200 is too low but $1,500 is not, and that the current legal framework has empowered opaque new political entities.
Concurrence — Justice Thomas
Justice Thomas, joined by Justice Scalia, agreed the law was unconstitutional but argued Buckley itself is wrong and should be overruled because it under-protects political speech. He contended contribution limits restrict speech just as seriously as expenditure limits and that both should face strict scrutiny, which Act 64 would fail; he also criticized the plurality's multi-factor test as unworkable and result-driven.
Dissent — Justice Stevens
“I am convinced that Buckley’s holding on expenditure limits is wrong, and that the time has come to overrule it.”Stevens's argument that the Court should abandon Buckley's ban on candidate spending limits.
Justice Stevens argued Buckley's ban on expenditure limits was wrong from the start and should be overruled, citing historical reliance on spending limits before Buckley, the absence of comparable reliance interests protecting Buckley's expenditure holding, and the burdens unlimited fundraising places on officials' time. He would have let Vermont's spending limits proceed to further fact-finding and joined Souter's dissent upholding the contribution limits.
Dissent — Justice Souter
Justice Souter, joined by Justice Ginsburg, argued it was premature to strike down the expenditure limits because the Second Circuit's proposed remand would let Vermont show its limits were the least restrictive way to address fundraising's drain on officials' time. He also found the contribution limits constitutional under Buckley and Shrink, citing extensive legislative findings and evidence that low limits had not disadvantaged challengers.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The plurality applied Buckley v. Valeo's long-standing rule that spending caps on a candidate's own campaign are categorically incompatible with the First Amendment because they directly reduce how much political speech a candidate can engage in, unlike limits on what others can give to a candidate.
- The plurality then asked whether stare decisis -- the principle that courts should generally stick with past rulings -- required sticking with Buckley's rule on expenditure limits, and concluded that nothing about Vermont's law or its record was different enough from Buckley to justify overruling or limiting that precedent.
- Turning to contribution limits, the plurality applied Buckley's 'closely drawn' test, which asks whether a contribution cap is tightly matched to a sufficiently important government interest such as preventing corruption, while normally deferring to a legislature's judgment about the right dollar amount.
- The plurality identified specific 'danger signs' that Vermont's limits might cross a constitutional line: they were the lowest in the country, well below limits the Court had previously approved, and applied the same tiny amounts to political parties as to individuals.
- Because those danger signs were present, the plurality independently reviewed the trial record and found five factors together showed the limits were not closely drawn: they likely starved challengers of needed funds, muzzled political parties, swept in volunteers' incidental expenses, were not adjusted for inflation, and lacked any special justification beyond the interests already addressed in Buckley.
- Concluding that the combination of low dollar amounts and these extra burdens made the limits disproportionate to Vermont's anti-corruption goals, the plurality held the contribution limits could not be separated from each other and struck down the contribution scheme as a whole.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Reaffirms Buckley v. Valeo (424 U. S. 1)
The plurality declined to overrule Buckley and applied its framework to strike down both expenditure and contribution limits.
Distinguishes Colorado II (533 U. S. 431)
The Court said party-contribution limits upheld there were far higher and less restrictive than Vermont's, so that case did not save Act 64.
Distinguishes Nixon v. Shrink Missouri Government PAC (528 U. S. 377)
The Court said Missouri's upheld limit was higher, indexed for inflation, and did not apply equally to parties, unlike Vermont's.