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Syllabus
Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth, but upheld other provisions limiting contributions by individuals to any single candidate to $1,000 per election. P. 385.
(b) In addressing the speech claim, the Buckley Court explicitly rejected both intermediate scrutiny for communicative action, see United States v. O'Brien, 391 U. S. 367, and the similar standard applicable to merely time, place, and manner restrictions, see, e. g., Adderley v. Florida, 385 U. S. 39, and instead referred generally to "the exacting scrutiny required by the First Amendment," 424 U. S., at 16. The Court then drew a line between expenditures and contributions, treating expenditure restrictions as direct restraints on speech, id., at 19, but saying, in effect, that limiting contributions left communication significantly unimpaired, id., at 20-21. The Court flagged a similar difference between the impacts of expenditure and contribution limits on association rights, id., at 22; see also id., at 28, and later made that distinction explicit, e. g., Federal Election Comm'n v. Massachusetts Citizens for Life, Inc., 479 U. S. 238, 259-260. Thus, under Buckley's standard of scrutiny, a contribution limit involving significant interference with associational rights could survive if the Government demonstrated that regulating contributions was a means "closely drawn" to match a "sufficiently important interest," 424 U. S., at 25, though the dollar amount of the limit need not be "fine tun[ed]," id., at 30. While Buckley did not attempt to parse distinctions between the speech and associational standards of scrutiny for contribution limits, the Court made clear that such restrictions bore more heavily on associational rights than on speech rights, and thus proceeded on the understanding that a contribution limitation surviving a claim of associational abridgment would survive a speech challenge as well. The Court found the prevention of corruption and the appearance of corruption to be a constitutionally sufficient justification for the contribution limits at issue. Id., at 25-28. Pp. 386-389.
(c) In defending its statute, Missouri espouses those same interests of preventing corruption and the appearance of it. Even without Buckley, there would be no serious question about the legitimacy of these interests, which underlie bribery and antigratuity statutes. Rather, respondents take the State to task for failing to justify the invocation of those interests with empirical evidence of actually corrupt practices or of a perception among Missouri voters that unrestricted contributions must have been exerting a covertly corrosive influence. The state statute is not void, however, for want of evidence. The quantum of empirical evidence needed to satisfy heightened judicial scrutiny of legislative judgments will vary up or down with the novelty and plausibility of the justification raised. Buckley demonstrates that the dangers of large,
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