Explaining Citizens United

The infamous 2010 Citizens United v. FEC Supreme Court ruling has been the subject of endless debate and changed the landscape of federal campaign financing. What did Citizens United actually do? How did this landmark decision impact campaign financing? How can we push back given the Supreme Court seems unlikely to reconsider its decision? 

Let’s set the scene. After a hard-fought legislative battle, Senators John McCain (R) and Russell Feingold (D) succeeded in championing the passage of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA) of 2002.¹ The law banned unlimited contributions to political parties or candidates. The law restricted political parties in how they pay for ads on a candidate’s behalf and created a host of disclosure requirements for campaigns to report to the Federal Election Committee.

Most importantly in the context of Citizens United, the BCRA prohibited advertisements which were paid for from the general treasuries of corporations and unions from being aired in the 60 days prior to an election, in line with a Supreme Court case from 1989: Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce.²

The law was quickly challenged by Senator Mitch McConnell and taken to the Supreme Court for being overly broad and overstepping Congress’ authority. In McConnell v. FEC, the Court essentially upheld the BCRA.³ However, the battle wasn’t over.

Seven years later, a new challenge faced the BCRA when a movie by Citizens United made the case Senator Hillary Clinton was unfit for presidential office. According to the FEC, the movie was expressly advocating against a political candidate and thus needed to be regulated according to the BCRA. Citizens United argued that their First Amendment right to political speech was being threatened. 

The Court faced similar questions to the ones posed by McConnell v. FEC but found that they had relied on the false precedent set by Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce. The Court declared that Section 203 of the BCRA, which prohibited corporations from using their general treasury funds to run independent political advertisements, violated the First Amendment. This changed the way corporations were impacted by campaign financing.⁴

Since the overturning of Section 203, corporations are permitted to spend any amount of money on political advertising as long as they don’t directly coordinate with the candidate’s campaign committee. Directly is the key word, because under the disclosure requirements of the BCRA, a corporation or union could anonymously contribute to candidate campaigns through dark money organizations.

Since the Citizens United decision, dark money has flooded into our federal elections, and the FEC is currently powerless to unmask these organization’s donors. The Citizens United decision has also opened the door for new constitutional questions on campaign finance. Among these is the recent National Republican Senatorial Committee v. FEC decision that struck down limits the spending that political parties can coordinate with candidates, an issue we discuss in another blog post. We need solutions to the issues caused by the Citizens United decision and Run Down the Middle is here to find and advocate for common sense policies that address issues like these.

Sources

1. “H.R.2356 – 107th Congress (2001-2002): Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002.” Congress.gov, Library of Congress, 27 March 2002, https://www.congress.gov/bill/107th-congress/house-bill/2356. ↩︎
2. “Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce.” Oyez, http://www.oyez.org/cases/1989/88-1569. Accessed 3 Sep. 2026. ↩︎
3. “McConnell v. Federal Election Commission.” Oyez, www.oyez.org/cases/2003/02-1674. Accessed 3 Sep. 2026. ↩︎
4. “Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.” Oyez, www.oyez.org/cases/2008/08-205. Accessed 3 Sep. 2026. ↩︎

About the author

Michael Stage

Economics and political science out of DePaul, by way of Austin. Believes in a government that is responsive because it is built to be.