# Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce (March 27, 1990) **Citation:** 494 U.S. 652 (1990) **Vote:** 6-3 **Decided:** March 27, 1990 **Status:** **Overruled** by [[Citizens United v. FEC]] (2010) *Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce* is the **case that [[Citizens United v. FEC]] overruled** — the precedent the Roberts Court had to overturn to reach its 2010 holding. For two decades (1990–2010), *Austin* was the controlling Supreme Court authority on corporate independent expenditures in candidate elections: such expenditures could be restricted by state and federal law without violating the [[First Amendment]]. *Citizens United* reversed this proposition. The case involved a Michigan state law (the Michigan Campaign Finance Act) prohibiting corporations from using general treasury funds for independent expenditures supporting or opposing candidates for state office. The Michigan Chamber of Commerce, a nonprofit corporation funded principally by for-profit member businesses, wanted to use treasury funds to publish a newspaper advertisement supporting a candidate in a special state House election. Michigan law required such expenditures to be made from a separate PAC funded by voluntary individual contributions, not from corporate treasury funds. The Chamber challenged the law on First Amendment grounds. The Supreme Court, with Justice Thurgood Marshall writing for a 6-3 majority, upheld the Michigan law. ## The Holding Justice Marshall's majority opinion recognized a **new compelling state interest** justifying restrictions on corporate political spending: the prevention of **"the corrosive and distorting effects of immense aggregations of wealth that are accumulated with the help of the corporate form and that have little or no correlation to the public's support for the corporation's political ideas."** This "anti-distortion" rationale was an important doctrinal innovation. Prior cases (most importantly [[Buckley v. Valeo]] in 1976) had recognized only the anti-quid-pro-quo-corruption rationale as justifying campaign-finance restrictions. *Austin* expanded the permissible justifications to include a broader concern about the distortion of democratic deliberation by corporate-form wealth aggregation. The 6-3 majority included Chief Justice Rehnquist, who had dissented from [[First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti]] (1978) on similar grounds. The dissenters were Justices Scalia, Kennedy, and O'Connor — three of the most reliable corporate-speech proponents on the Court at the time. Scalia's dissent argued that the anti-distortion rationale was inconsistent with the First Amendment's "speaker-neutral" principle: the government cannot restrict speech because of who is speaking or because the speaker's voice might be too loud. ## What Austin Established For two decades, *Austin* was the controlling authority: 1. **Corporate independent expenditures in candidate elections could be restricted.** State and federal law could require corporate political spending to be conducted through PACs funded by voluntary individual contributions rather than from general treasury funds. 2. **The anti-distortion rationale was a valid governmental interest.** Beyond quid pro quo corruption, the government could justify campaign-finance restrictions on grounds of preventing wealth-accumulated-through-the-corporate-form from distorting political discourse. 3. **The corporate/individual distinction had constitutional weight.** Corporations and individuals were not categorically equivalent for First Amendment political-spending purposes; the corporate form created concerns the individual form did not. These three propositions were the doctrinal foundation of the campaign-finance restrictions that survived [[Buckley v. Valeo]]'s individual-spending dismantling. The 2002 [[Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act]] electioneering-communications restriction explicitly relied on *Austin*'s reasoning, and the 2003 [[McConnell v. FEC]] decision upholding BCRA cited *Austin* as controlling authority. ## The Overruling [[Citizens United v. FEC]] (January 21, 2010) overruled *Austin* on a 5-4 vote. The Roberts Court majority (Roberts, Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, Alito) held that: 1. **The anti-distortion rationale is constitutionally invalid.** The First Amendment forbids the government from restricting speech because of "the corrosive and distorting effects of immense aggregations of wealth" — that is precisely the kind of speaker-based distinction the First Amendment forbids. 2. **Corporate independent expenditures cannot be restricted in candidate elections.** Corporations have the same First Amendment political-spending rights as individuals, at least for independent expenditures. 3. **The corporate/individual distinction lacks constitutional weight.** Corporations and individuals are not categorically different for First Amendment purposes. The Roberts Court's overruling of *Austin* was particularly aggressive procedurally — the original argument in [[Citizens United v. FEC]] had been on narrower grounds, and the Court issued an unusual order directing the parties to reargue the case on the broader question of whether *Austin* should be overruled. The reargument procedure signaled that the Court was prepared to make the broader holding, which it did. ## Significance for the KB *Austin* is the **anchor precedent** for the constitutional regime that operated between 1990 and 2010. Its overruling by *Citizens United* is the single most consequential moment in the Roberts Court's dismantling of the post-Watergate campaign-finance framework. The contemporary dark-money architecture documented across this KB — [[Super PACs]], the [[501(c)(4)]] political-spending infrastructure, the Koch and Leo donor networks — operates in the constitutional space *Citizens United* opened by overruling *Austin*. The doctrinal pattern *Austin*-and-its-overruling illustrates is characteristic of the Roberts Court's approach: precedents constraining concentrated wealth are overruled (or substantially narrowed); precedents protecting wealth-driven political voice are extended. The *Austin* anti-distortion rationale would, if it had survived, have justified substantial restrictions on the post-2010 dark-money architecture. Its overruling made that architecture constitutionally permissible. ## See Also - [[Citizens United v. FEC]] — the 2010 case that overruled *Austin* - [[Buckley v. Valeo]] — the 1976 case *Austin* extended (recognizing a new anti-distortion rationale beyond the *Buckley* anti-corruption rationale) - [[First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti]] — the 1978 case *Austin* distinguished (ballot measures vs. candidate elections) - [[McConnell v. FEC]] — the 2003 case that relied on *Austin*; itself partially overruled by *Citizens United* - [[Money as Speech]] — the doctrine *Austin* attempted to constrain - [[Federal Election Commission]] — the federal agency operating under the post-*Austin*, then post-*Citizens United* framework - [[Campaign Finance Timeline]] — full chronological view - [[Campaign Finance]] — Foundations hub