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Syllabus
enforceable even as to spending coordinated with a candidate. Id., at 623-626. On remand, the District Court held for the Party on that claim, and a divided Tenth Circuit panel affirmed.
Held: Because a party's coordinated expenditures, unlike expenditures truly independent, may be restricted to minimize circumvention of the Act's contribution limits, the Party's facial challenge is rejected. Pp. 440-465.
(a) Political expenditure limits deserve closer scrutiny than contribution restrictions, e. g., Buckley, 424 U. S., at 14-23, because expenditure restraints generally curb more expressive and associational activity than contribution limits, e. g., id., at 19-23, and because unlimited contributions are more clearly linked to political corruption than other kinds of unlimited political spending, at least where the spending is not coordinated with a candidate or his campaign, e. g., id., at 47. Although the First Amendment line is easy to draw when it falls between independent expenditures by individuals or political action committees (PACs) without any candidate's approval and contributions in the form of cash gifts to candidates, see, e. g., id., at 19-23, facts speak less clearly once the independence of the spending cannot be taken for granted. Congress's functional treatment of coordinated expenditures by individuals and nonparty groups like contributions prevents attempts to circumvent the Act through coordinated expenditures amounting to disguised contributions. Id., at 47. Buckley, in fact, enhanced the significance of this functional treatment by striking down independent expenditure limits on First Amendment grounds while upholding limitations on contributions (by individuals and nonparty groups), as defined to include coordinated expenditures. Id., at 23-59. Colorado I addressed the FEC's effort to stretch the functional treatment one step further. Because Buckley had treated some coordinated expenditures like contributions and upheld their limitation, the FEC's argument went, the Party Expenditure Provision should stand as applied to all party election spending, see, e. g., 518 U. S., at 619-623. Holding otherwise, the principal opinion found that, because "independent" party expenditures are no more likely to serve corruption than independent expenditures by anyone else, there was no justification for subjecting party election spending across the board to the kinds of limits previously invalidated when applied to individuals and nonparty groups. See id., at 616. But that still left the question whether the First Amendment allows coordinated election expenditures by parties to be treated functionally as contributions, the way coordinated expenditures by other entities are treated. The issue in this case is, accordingly, whether a party is in a different position from other political speakers, giving it a claim to de-
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