196
Opinion of the Court
not render the balance of BCRA's amendments to FECA § 304 unconstitutional. 251 F. Supp. 2d, at 242 (per curiam).
We agree with the District Court that the important state interests that prompted the Buckley Court to uphold FECA's disclosure requirements—providing the electorate with information, deterring actual corruption and avoiding any appearance thereof, and gathering the data necessary to enforce more substantive electioneering restrictions—apply in full to BCRA.81 Accordingly, Buckley amply supports application of FECA § 304's disclosure requirements to the entire range of "electioneering communications." As the authors of the District Court's per curiam opinion concluded after reviewing evidence concerning the use of purported "issue ads" to influence federal elections:
"The factual record demonstrates that the abuse of the present law not only permits corporations and labor unions to fund broadcast advertisements designed to influence federal elections, but permits them to do so while concealing their identities from the public. BCRA's disclosure provisions require these organizations to reveal their identities so that the public is able to identify the source of the funding behind broadcast advertisements influencing certain elections. Plaintiffs' disdain for BCRA's disclosure provisions is nothing short of surprising. Plaintiffs challenge BCRA's restrictions on electioneering communications on the premise that they should be permitted to spend corporate and labor union general treasury funds in the sixty
81 The disclosure requirements that BCRA § 201 added to FECA § 304 are actually somewhat less intrusive than the comparable requirements that have long applied to persons making independent expenditures. For example, the previous version of § 304 required groups making independent expenditures to identify donors who contributed more than $200. 2 U. S. C. § 434(c)(2)(C). The comparable requirement in the amendments applies only to donors of $1,000 or more. §§ 434(f)(2)(E), (F) (Supp. II).
Page: Index Previous 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007