Cite as: 528 U. S. 377 (2000)
Thomas, J., dissenting
the speech-by-proxy argument or the reality that Buckley's remaining premises fall when deprived of that support.7
After ignoring these shortcomings, the Court proceeds to apply something less—much less—than strict scrutiny. Just how much less the majority never says. The Court in Buckley at least purported to employ a test of " 'closest scrutiny.' " 424 U. S., at 25 (quoting NAACP v. Alabama ex rel. Patterson, 357 U. S. 449, 461 (1958)). (The Court's words were belied by its actions, however, and it never deployed the test in the fashion that the superlative instructs. See Colorado Republican, 518 U. S., at 640-641, n. 7 (Thomas, J., concurring in judgment and dissenting in part) (noting that Buckley purported to apply strict scrutiny but failed to do so in fact).) The Court today abandons even that pretense and reviews contributions under the sui generis "Buckley's standard of scrutiny," ante, at 387, which fails to obscure the Court's ad hoc balancing away of First Amendment rights. Apart from its endorsement of Buckley's rejection of the intermediate standards of review used to evaluate expressive conduct and time, place, and manner restrictions, ante, at 386, the Court makes no effort to justify its deviation from the tests we traditionally employ in free speech cases. See Denver Area Ed. Telecommunications Consortium, Inc. v. FCC, 518 U. S. 727, 774 (1996) (Souter, J., concurring) ("Reviewing speech regulations under fairly strict categorical rules keeps the starch in the standards for those moments
7 Implicitly, however, the majority downplays its reliance upon the speech-by-proxy argument. In fact, the majority reprints nearly all of Buckley's analysis of contributors' speech interests, block quoting almost an entire paragraph from that decision. See ante, at 386-387 (quoting Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U. S., at 20-21). Tellingly, the only complete sentence from that paragraph that the majority fails to quote is the final sentence—which happens to be the one directly setting forth the speech-by-proxy rationale. See id., at 21 ("While contributions may result in political expression if spent by a candidate or an association to present views to the voters, the transformation of contributions into political debate involves speech by someone other than the contributor").
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