# National Republican Senatorial Committee v. FEC Supreme Court decision of **June 30, 2026** holding that the [[Federal Election Campaign Act]]'s limits on **coordinated party expenditures** — 52 U.S.C. § 30116(d) — violate the First Amendment. The Court overruled [[FEC v. Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee]] (*Colorado II*, 2001). National party committees and the federal accounts of state parties may now spend without limit in coordination with a named federal candidate. ## Path to the Court - **November 4, 2022** — the NRSC, the National Republican Congressional Committee, then-Senator JD Vance and then-Representative Steve Chabot sued the [[Federal Election Commission]] in the Southern District of Ohio. - **January 19, 2024** — the district court certified the constitutional question to the *en banc* Sixth Circuit. - **September 5, 2024** — the *en banc* Sixth Circuit upheld the limits, holding that only the Supreme Court could overrule *Colorado II*. - **December 9, 2025** — argued. - **June 30, 2026** — reversed and remanded. ## The reasoning *Colorado II* had justified the limits partly as a curb on a donor's "undue influence" and partly as an anti-circumvention rule. The *NRSC* Court held that [[McCutcheon v. FEC]] (2014) and [[FEC v. Ted Cruz for Senate]] (2022) had already rejected undue influence as a permissible basis for regulating campaign finance, leaving *quid pro quo* corruption as the only cognizable interest. On circumvention, the Court held that FECA's **earmarking** provision and its **disclosure** provisions already serve that interest without restricting party speech — so the coordinated-expenditure limits were neither necessary nor narrowly tailored. The structural consequence is drawn in [[How Campaign Money Moves]]: the two provisions the Court named as adequate substitutes are administered by a Commission that has lacked a quorum since April 2025. ## See also - [[How Campaign Money Moves]] · [[Campaign Finance Hub]] · [[Coordinated Party Expenditure]] - [[Citizens United v. FEC]] · [[SpeechNow.org v. FEC]] · [[Buckley v. Valeo]] · [[Money as Speech]] - [[JD Vance]] · [[Federal Election Commission]] · [[2026 Midterms Hub]]