The U.S. Supreme Court has been busy issuing end-of-term decisions, including the Ricci decision which issued today. That decision (which held by a 5-4 vote that a municipality violated Title VII by declining to certify results of an exam that would make disproportionately more white applicants eligible for promotion than minority applicants, due to fears that certifying the results would lead to charges of racial discrimination) understandably received most of the press's attention today.
However, the Court did not issue a decision in the Citizens United v. FEC case, which was argued to the Court on March 24. Instead, the Court took the extraordinary step of ordering reargument of the case in a special session on September 9. Thus, the case will likely be decided by a different Supreme Court than the one to which arguments were presented on March 24.
The facts of the case surround a documentary on Hillary Clinton which a conservative not-for-profit group wanted to advertise in Democratic primary states without complying with federal campaign finance law. Lower courts held that the movie was essentially a long campaign ad, and therefore must be regulated like one.
The Court ordered the parties to submit additional briefing to address whether the Court should overturn its past decisions banning certain political speech by corporations and corporate and union spending on television campaign ads. This could signal that a majority of the Court is contemplating the reversal of decades of precedent on how money is spent in federal elections.
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