44 CITIZENS UNITED v. FEDERAL ELECTION COMM’N Opinion of STEVENS, J. rately to criticize the expenditure restriction as applied to unions, even though the Court declined to pass on its constitutionality. Ante, at 27–28. Two features of these cases are of far greater relevance. First, those Justices were writing separately; which is to say, their position failed to command a majority. Prior to today, this was a fact we found significant in evaluating precedents. Sec­ ond, each case in this line expressed support for the prin­ ciple that corporate and union political speech financed with PAC funds, collected voluntarily from the organiza­ tion’s stockholders or members, receives greater protection than speech financed with general treasury funds.60 —————— 60 See Pipefitters v. United States, 407 U. S. 385, 409, 414–415 (1972) (reading the statutory bar on corporate and union campaign spending not to apply to “the voluntary donations of employees,” when main­ tained in a separate account, because “[t]he dominant [legislative] concern in requiring that contributions be voluntary was, after all, to protect the dissenting stockholder or union member”); Automobile Workers, 352 U. S., at 592 (advising the District Court to consider on remand whether the broadcast in question was “paid for out of the general dues of the union membership or [whether] the funds [could] be fairly said to have obtained on a voluntary basis”); United States v. CIO, 335 U. S. 106, 123 (1948) (observing that “funds voluntarily contributed [by union members or corporate stockholders] for election purposes” might not be covered by the expenditure bar). Both the Pipefitters and the Automobile Workers Court approvingly referenced Congress’ goal of reducing “the effect of aggregated wealth on federal elections,” understood as wealth drawn from a corporate or union general treasury without the stockholders’ or members’ “free and knowing choice.” Pipefitters, 407 U. S., at 416; see Automobile Workers, 352 U. S., at 582. The two dissenters in Pipefitters would not have read the statutory provision in question, a successor to §304 of the Taft-Hartley Act, to allow such robust use of corporate and union funds to finance otherwise prohibited electioneering. “This opening of the door to extensive corporate and union influence on the elective and legislative processes,” Justice Powell wrote, “must be viewed with genuine concern. This seems to me to be a regressive step as contrasted with the numerous legislative and judicial actions in recent years designed to assure that elections are indeed free and representative.” 407 U. S., at 450 (opinion