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Opinion of the Court
meaningful purpose is served by § 315(d)(4)'s burden on a party's right to engage independently in express advocacy.
The Government argues that § 315(d)(4) nevertheless is constitutional because it is not an outright ban (or cap) on independent expenditures, but rather offers parties a voluntary choice between a constitutional right and a statutory benefit. Whatever merit that argument might have in the abstract, it fails to account for new § 315(d)(4)(B), which provides:
"For purposes of this paragraph, all political committees established and maintained by a national political party (including all congressional campaign committees) and all political committees established and maintained by a State political party (including any subordinate committee of a State committee) shall be considered to be a single political committee." 2 U. S. C. § 441a(d)(4)(B) (Supp. II).
Given that provision, it simply is not the case that each party committee can make a voluntary and independent choice between exercising its right to engage in independent advocacy and taking advantage of the increased limits on coordinated spending under §§ 315(d)(1)-(3). Instead, the decision resides solely in the hands of the first mover, such that a local party committee can bind both the state and national parties to its chosen spending option.96 It is one thing
to say that Congress may require a party committee to give
96 Although the District Court and all the parties to this litigation endorse the interpretation set forth in the text, it is not clear that subpara-graph (B) should be read so broadly: The reference to "a State" instead of "the States" suggests that Congress meant to distinguish between committees associated with the party for each State (which would be grouped together by State, with each grouping treated as a single committee for purposes of the choice) and committees associated with a national party (which would likewise be grouped together and treated as a separate political committee). We need not resolve the interpretive puzzle, however, because even under the more limited reading a local party committee would be able to tie the hands of a state committee or other local committees in the same State.
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