28 NATIONAL REPUBLICAN SENATORIAL COMMITTEE v. FEDERAL ELECTION COMM’N Opinion of the Court * * * The intervenors proclaim that the “Framers were famously suspicious of parties.” Brief for IntervenorRespondents 28. But the Framers were even more famously suspicious of government suppression of political speech. Recall again the words of the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech.” The Constitution’s text matters. Contrary to that text, the political-party coordinated-expenditure limitations directly abridge the freedom of speech of political parties. History also matters. For nearly 200 years after the ratification of the First Amendment, parties could spend on campaigns in coordination with candidates. Parties and candidates could work cooperatively toward their common goal of advancing policies and winning elections to implement those policies. Again, no one suggests “that these elections were not functional or that they were marred by corruption.” Federal Election Comm’n v. Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Comm., 533 U. S. 431, 473 (2001) (Colorado II) (THOMAS, J., dissenting) (quotation marks and citation omitted). So too, precedent matters. This Court’s more recent decisions in cases such as McCutcheon and Cruz (as distinct from Colorado II) demonstrate that the First Amendment proscribes disproportionate regulations such as FECA’s limits on political-party coordinated expenditures. See McCutcheon v. Federal Election Comm’n, 572 U. S. 185, 218 (2014); Federal Election Comm’n v. Ted Cruz for Senate, 596 U. S. 289, 306–307 (2022). In short, constitutional text, history, and precedent establish that the political-party coordinated-expenditure limits violate the First Amendment. Importantly, by holding FECA’s political-party coordinated-expenditure restrictions unconstitutional, the

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