Cite as: 540 U. S. 93 (2003)
Opinion of Kennedy, J.
sumes that because Buckley applied the rationale in the context of contribution and expenditure limits, its application gives Congress and the Court the capacity to classify any challenged campaign finance regulation as either a contribution or an expenditure limit. Thus, it first concludes Title I's regulations are contribution limits and then proceeds to apply the lesser scrutiny.
"Complex as its provisions may be, § 323, in the main, does little more than regulate the ability of wealthy individuals, corporations, and unions to contribute large sums of money to influence federal elections, federal candidates, and federal officeholders." Ante, at 138.
Though the majority's analysis denies it, Title I's dynamics defy this facile, initial classification.
Title I's provisions prohibit the receipt of funds; and in most instances, but not all, this can be defined as a contribution limit. They prohibit the spending of funds; and in most instances this can be defined as an expenditure limit. They prohibit the giving of funds to nonprofit groups; and this falls within neither definition as we have ever defined it. Finally, they prohibit fundraising activity; and the parties dispute the classification of this regulation (the challengers say it is core political association, while the Government says it ultimately results only in a limit on contribution receipts).
The majority's classification overlooks these competing characteristics and exchanges Buckley's substance for a formulaic caricature of it. Despite the parties' and the majority's best efforts on both sides of the question, it ignores reality to force these regulations into one of the two legal categories as either contribution or expenditure limitations. Instead, these characteristics seem to indicate Congress has enacted regulations that are neither contribution nor expenditure limits, or are perhaps both at once.
Even if the laws could be classified in broad terms as only contribution limits, as the majority is inclined to do, that still
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