392
Opinion of the Court
ents are wrong in arguing that in the years since Buckley came down we have "supplemented" its holding with a new requirement that governments enacting contribution limits must " 'demonstrate that the recited harms are real, not merely conjectural,' " Brief for Respondents Shrink Missouri Government PAC et al. 26 (quoting United States v. Treasury Employees, 513 U. S. 454, 475 (1995) (in turn quoting Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. v. FCC, 512 U. S. 622, 664 (1994))), a contention for which respondents rely principally on Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Comm. v. Federal Election Comm'n, 518 U. S. 604 (1996). We have never accepted mere conjecture as adequate to carry a First Amendment burden, and Colorado Republican did not deal with a government's burden to justify limits on contributions. Although the principal opinion in that case charged the Government with failure to show a real risk of corruption, id., at 616 (opinion of Breyer, J.), the issue in question was limits on independent expenditures by political parties, which the principal opinion expressly distinguished from contribution limits: "limitations on independent expenditures are less directly related to preventing corruption" than contributions are, id., at 615. In that case, the "constitution-ally significant fact" that there was no "coordination between the candidate and the source of the expenditure" kept the principal opinion "from assuming, absent convincing evidence to the contrary, that [a limitation on expenditures] is necessary to combat a substantial danger of corruption of the
("Buckley identified a single narrow exception to the rule that limits on political activity were contrary to the First Amendment. The exception relates to the perception of undue influence of large contributors to a candidate"); see also Federal Election Comm'n v. National Conservative Political Action Comm., 470 U. S. 480, 500 (1985) (observing that Buckley upheld contribution limits as constitutional, and noting the Court's "deference to a congressional determination of the need for a prophylactic rule where the evil of potential corruption had long been recognized").
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