Party Time: U.S. Supreme Court Invalidates Limits on Coordinated Political Party Committee Spending

By Brett W. Johnson, Eric H. Spencer, Joseph Kanefield,¹ and Thomas Williams

On June 30, 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its opinion in National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) v. Federal Election Commission (FEC),² holding that the Federal Election Campaign Act’s (FECA) limit on political-party coordinated expenditures violates the First Amendment.³ The 6–3 decision overrules nearly a quarter-century-old precedent from FEC v. Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee (2001) (Colorado II) related to the interactions and funding arrangements between political parties and candidates,⁴ and stands to reshape the landscape of federal campaign finance and electoral spending.

As anticipated last summer,⁵ the Court’s decision will likely shift the locus of federal election spending away from political action committees (PACs) and independent expenditure-only political action committees (Super PACs) back to political parties, recalibrating the balance of power between political parties, donors, and candidates for public office.

I. Previous Limits on Political-Party Coordinated Expenditures

Under the now-invalidated provision of FECA, national party committees were limited in making coordinated expenditures for candidates running for federal office. As the phrase implies, “coordinated expenditures” are political party expenditures made in coordination or cooperation with a federal candidate. FECA confined coordinated spending to the greater of $20,000 or two cents multiplied by the voting-age population of the representative area.⁶ National political party committees and state political party committees were considered to be “a single political entity,” further restricting coordinated spending by political parties with candidates for public office.⁷

Since FECA’s passage, four governmental interests have been offered for abridging political parties’ First Amendment rights with regard to campaign finance spending: (1) congressional justification “for the ‘purpose of reducing what it saw as wasteful and excessive campaign spending’”;⁸ (2) the “interest in preventing a political party (as distinct from donors) from exercising undue influence on its candidates”;⁹ (3) limiting a “donor’s ‘undue influence on an officeholder’s judgment and the appearance of such influence’”;¹⁰ and (4) preventing donors from circumventing the contribution limits to candidates by routing money through political party committees.¹¹

II. One Surviving Interest: Preventing Quid Pro Quo Corruption

The Court reaffirmed that the sole governmental interest in restricting campaign finance spending is to prevent quid pro quo corruption — specifically “a direct exchange of an official act for money . . . dollars for political favors.”¹² Reviewing the limits under “closely drawn” scrutiny — which it stressed must now be “rigorous,”  and not the deferential review applied in Colorado II — the Court worked through each asserted interest and rejected them in turn.¹³

First, the Court held that Congress’s cost-reduction rationale “is entirely inadequate under the First Amendment,”¹⁴ because Congress may not restrict spending simply to reduce the amount of money in politics or to level the electoral playing field.

Second, the theory that a party exerts “undue influence” over its candidates was not defended, and it “does not make any sense” given the intertwined relationship between a party and its candidates — any such influence “is not corruption.”¹⁵

Third, the donor-centric “undue influence” rationale under Colorado II has been “squarely rejected” in subsequent cases,¹⁶ and “ingratiation, gratitude, access, or the like” are not considered corruption by the Court.¹⁷

Fourth, and most consequentially, the Court addressed the anti circumvention rationale — the concern that a donor could potentially evade the campaign finance limits for candidate committees by contributing to a political party committee that then spends it in coordination with the candidate. The Court concluded that this interest is already served by less speech restrictive tools: contribution limits to political committees, FECA’s earmarking rule (which treats funds “directed through an intermediary or conduit” to a candidate as contributions to that candidate),¹⁸ and modern disclosure requirements.¹⁹ Stacking the coordinated expenditure caps atop those measures amounted to an impermissible “prophylaxis upon prophylaxis upon prophylaxis,” rendering the caps “disproportionate” and neither “necessary” nor “narrowly tailored.”²⁰ The Court reinforced the point with the experience of the different states, a majority of which give parties free rein to coordinate with their state‑level nominees with “no evidence of corruption” having materialized.

Importantly the Court struck down only FECA’s political-party coordinated expenditure caps. It expressly declined to reach the statutory limits on coordinated expenditures by outside groups, reasoning that “political parties possess an especially strong First Amendment interest in working together with their candidates and making expenditures on political speech in coordination with their candidates.”²¹

As such, FECA’s surviving guardrails remain fully operative — contribution limits, the earmarking rules that treat directed contributions as contributions to the candidate, disclosure requirements, and the federal bribery statute all continue in force.²²

III. Key Takeaways from NRSC v. FEC

The most immediate consequence is that FECA’s ceilings on coordinated political party spending are eliminated. Political party committees had been limited previously to between roughly $130,600 and $4.07 million in coordination with a U.S. Senate candidate, between $65,300 and $130,600 for a U.S. House candidate, and roughly $32.4 million for a presidential nominee.²³ Those limits no longer constrain coordinated party spending. The change is party-neutral, as all political party committees may now coordinate more closely with candidates and compete “on a level playing field.”²⁴

Although FECA’s limitations on political-party coordinated expenditures are no longer valid, political parties and donors are still prohibited from earmarking or directing funds through a political party committee to a candidate committee in excess of contribution limits. Earmarked and directed funds are treated as contributions to a political committee and are still subject to the contribution limits of FECA.

The Court’s decision in NRSC v. FEC will likely divert political money back toward political party committees. In the 2024 cycle, federal PACs raised more than $15.7 billion compared to roughly $2.7 billion for political party committees. By freeing political party committees to coordinate without limit, the Court has made them a more attractive spending vehicle, and donors, business groups, and regulated industries may well follow with financial support. In addition, based on modern utilization of “joint fundraising” operations, candidates in one state that are “safe” can then jointly raise in the safe district with the political party that can then be used to contribute to other less-safe candidates.

While Super PACs still remain a viable alternative for election spending because they can accept unlimited funds from legal contributors, the express prohibition on coordination with candidate committees limits their effectiveness in comparison with the now-unrestricted political party committees.²⁵

As candidates, political parties, companies, and other PACs engage in these activities, the implications of NRSC v. FEC must be evaluated to determine the proper handling of raised and contributed funds for compliance purposes.