Over the past fifty years, campaign finance law in the United States has undergone a profound transformation. For the first 200 years of the nation’s history, the power to regulate elections and election-related spending rested with the American people and their elected lawmakers. But over the past five decades, the federal courts have
increasingly consolidated that power within the judiciary. Beginning with Buckley v. Valeo (1976), the Supreme Court has imposed stringent legal standards that constrain the ability of elected representatives to regulate election financing. This has created discord at both the federal and state level.

Under the precedent set in Buckley, state governments may only regulate electioneering under limited circumstances (i.e., when laws are narrowly tailored to prevent quid pro quo corruption). Other compelling state interests, such as protecting election integrity or promoting self-determination, have been deemed insufficient by federal judges. As a result, dozens of state laws aimed at limiting out-of-state contributions, interference by foreign actors, and spending by corporations and unions have been invalidated without regard to local history, voter preferences, or widely shared concerns about corruption and foreign influence. This is an affront to our nation’s system of federalism.

America was built upon a deliberate power-sharing relationship between state and national institutions. Federalism was not simply a pragmatic compromise — it was meant to promote democratic accountability, while ensuring that states had latitude to tailor policies to local needs.

Campaign finance is a policy area where regulatory needs vary significantly across geography. However, these distinctions have been flattened by the one-size-fits-all standard imposed by the federal judiciary, with stark consequences for both elected officials and voters.

We submit, as one possible solution, an amendment to the United States Constitution. The proposed For Our Freedom Amendment would clarify that state and federal lawmakers, not federal courts, retain the authority to determine whether and how campaign contributions and expenditures ought to be regulated. The amendment would help restore equilibrium to our constitutional system, allowing states to once again function as “laboratories of democracy.” In a nation so vast and varied, prosperity does not originate from top-down mandates, but from allowing citizens to engage in the trial-and-error that has always defined self-government.

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