2
FEDERAL ELECTION COMM’N v. TED CRUZ FOR SENATE
Syllabus
justification, and dismissed as moot their challenges to the regulation.
Held:
1. Appellees have standing to challenge the threatened enforcement
of Section 304. Pp. 3–10.
(a) The Government recognizes that the Committee’s present inability to repay the final $10,000 of Cruz’s loans constitutes an injury
in fact both to Cruz and his Committee. It maintains, however, that
appellees lack Article III standing because these injuries are not traceable to the threatened enforcement of Section 304, see Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U. S. 555, 560–561. First, the Government argues that appellees knowingly triggered the application of the loanrepayment limitation and thus their injuries are traceable to themselves, not the Government. This Court has never recognized an exception to Article III standing’s traceability requirement for injuries
that a party purposely incurs. Moreover, this Court has made clear
that an injury resulting from the application or threatened application
of an unlawful enactment remains fairly traceable to such application,
even if the injury could be described in some sense as willingly incurred. See Evers v. Dwyer, 358 U. S. 202, 204 (per curiam). Cases
cited by the Government—Clapper v. Amnesty Int’l USA, 568 U. S.
398, and Pennsylvania v. New Jersey, 426 U. S. 660 (per curiam)—do
not alter that conclusion. In contrast to those cases, here the appellees’
injuries are directly inflicted by the FEC’s threatened enforcement of
the provisions they now challenge. That appellees chose to subject
themselves to those provisions does not change the fact that they are
subject to them, and will face genuine legal penalties if they do not
comply. Finally, the Government’s observation that it should not be
blamed for appellees’ injuries because the Committee had a legally
available alternative—i.e., repaying Cruz’s loans in full with pre-election funds, within 20 days of the election—misses the point. Demanding that the Committee do so would require it to forgo the exercise of
the First Amendment right the Court must assume it has when assessing standing—the right to repay its campaign debts in full, at any
time. Pp. 3–6.
(b) The Government next argues that although appellees would
have standing to challenge the FEC’s implementing regulation,
§116.11, they do not have standing to challenge Section 304 itself. The
Government contends that the Committee used pre-election funds to
repay the first $250,000, and thus Section 304’s cap on using post-election funds to repay a candidate’s loan does not prohibit repayment of
the final $10,000 here. Instead, it is the agency’s regulation—with its
20-day limit—that prevents repayment. Appellees insist that they
used post-election funds—in the form of overlimit contributions to the
2018 campaign that were “redesignated” as contributions to the 2024