294
Opinion of Kennedy, J.
at 46-47. The Court concluded that though the limitation reached both coordinated and independent expenditures, there were other valid FECA provisions that barred coordinated expenditures. Hence, the limit at issue only added regulation to independent expenditures. On that basis it concluded the provision was unsupported by any valid corruption interest. The conduct to which it added regulation (independent expenditures) posed no quid pro quo danger. See ibid.
Placing Buckley's anticorruption rationale in the context of the federal legislative power yields the following rule: Congress' interest in preventing corruption provides a basis for regulating federal candidates' and officeholders' receipt of quids, whether or not the candidate or officeholder corruptly received them. Conversely, the rule requires the Court to strike down campaign finance regulations when they do not add regulation to "actual or apparent quid pro quo arrangements." Id., at 45.
The Court ignores these constitutional bounds and in effect interprets the anticorruption rationale to allow regulation not just of "actual or apparent quid pro quo arrangements," ibid., but of any conduct that wins goodwill from or influences a Member of Congress. It is not that there is any quarrel between this opinion and the majority that the inquiry since Buckley has been whether certain conduct creates "undue influence." See ante, at 154. On that we agree. The very aim of Buckley's standard, however, was to define undue influence by reference to the presence of quid pro quo involving the officeholder. The Court, in contrast, concludes that access, without more, proves influence is undue. Access, in the Court's view, has the same legal ramifications as actual or apparent corruption of officeholders. This new definition of corruption sweeps away all protections for speech that lie in its path.
The majority says it is not abandoning our cases in this way, but its reasoning shows otherwise:
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