30
MCCUTCHEON v. FEDERAL ELECTION COMM’N
Opinion of ROBERTS, C. J.
the base limits. The absence of such a prospect today
belies the Government’s asserted objective of preventing
corruption or its appearance. The improbability of circumvention indicates that the aggregate limits instead
further the impermissible objective of simply limiting the
amount of money in political campaigns.
C
Quite apart from the foregoing, the aggregate limits
violate the First Amendment because they are not “closely
drawn to avoid unnecessary abridgment of associational
freedoms.” Buckley, 424 U. S., at 25. In the First
Amendment context, fit matters. Even when the Court is
not applying strict scrutiny, we still require “a fit that is
not necessarily perfect, but reasonable; that represents not
necessarily the single best disposition but one whose scope
is ‘in proportion to the interest served,’ . . . that employs
not necessarily the least restrictive means but . . . a means
narrowly tailored to achieve the desired objective.” Board
of Trustees of State Univ. of N. Y. v. Fox, 492 U. S. 469,
480 (1989) (quoting In re R. M. J., 455 U. S. 191, 203
(1982)). Here, because the statute is poorly tailored to the
Government’s interest in preventing circumvention of the
base limits, it impermissibly restricts participation in
the political process.
1
The Government argues that the aggregate limits are
justified because they prevent an individual from giving to
too many initial recipients who might subsequently recontribute a donation. After all, only recontributed funds can
conceivably give rise to circumvention of the base limits.
Yet all indications are that many types of recipients have
scant interest in regifting donations they receive.
Some figures might be useful to put the risk of circumvention in perspective. We recognize that no data can be
Select target paragraph3
Connect to a paragraph
Connect to an entity
Disable highlights
Add to table of contents