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REPUBLICAN FEDERAL CAMPAIGN COMM. Thomas, J., dissenting
In any event, there is a second, well-tailored option for combating corruption that does not entail the reduction of parties' First Amendment freedoms. The heart of the Court's circumvention argument is that, whereas individuals can donate only $2,000 to a candidate in a given election cycle, they can donate $20,000 to the national committees of a political party, an amount that is allegedly large enough to corrupt the candidate. See ante, at 453. If indeed $20,000 is enough to corrupt a candidate (an assumption that seems implausible on its face and is, in any event, unsupported by any evidence), the proper response is to lower the cap. That way, the speech restriction is directed at the source of the alleged corruption—the individual donor—and not the party. "The normal method of deterring unlawful conduct is to impose an appropriate punishment on the person who engages in it." Bartnicki, 532 U. S., at 529. "[I]t would be quite remarkable to hold that speech by a law-abiding [entity] can be suppressed in order to deter conduct by a non-law-abiding third party." Id., at 529-530. The Court takes that un-orthodox path today, a decision that is all the more remarkable considering that the controlling opinion in Colorado I expressly rejected it just five years ago. 518 U. S., at 617 ("We could understand how Congress, were it to conclude that the potential for evasion of the individual contribution limits was a serious matter, might decide to change the statute's limitations on contributions to political parties. But we do not believe that the risk of corruption present here could justify the 'markedly greater burden on basic freedoms caused by' the statute's limitations on expenditures" (citations omitted)).
In my view, it makes no sense to contravene a political party's core First Amendment rights because of what a third party might unlawfully try to do. Instead of broadly restricting political parties' speech, the Government should have pursued better-tailored alternatives for combating the alleged corruption.
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