Stand by Your First Amendment Values - Not Your Ad: The Court's Wrong Turn in Mcconnell V. Fec

Abstract

Under the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA), candidates must disclose the funding for all electioneering communication and state personally that they approve their campaign ads' messages. This paper argues that these provisions of the BCRA are unconstitutional. Though only briefly addressed in the Supreme Court's landmark decision in McConnell v. FEC, these provisions impose grave burdens on political speech while bearing only a tenuous relationship to the government's anticorruption and informational interests.