The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday halted a challenge to political parties seeking access to cheaper TV ads as a sprint toward the midterm elections commences.
Justices on the high court halted a ruling that limited cheaper TV broadcast ads to political candidates. The Federal Communications Commission allows candidates to have access to “lowest unit charge” broadcast rates in the weeks leading up to primary and general elections.
“Political candidates, joint fundraising committees with noncandidate members, and political parties engaged in coordinated political activity were all entitled to the LUC subject to certain conditions,” justices on the court said of the FCC’s rules.
Four Democrats, including former Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., sought to challenge the FCC’s rule.
The high court said lower court federal judges are not able to intervene on a dispute that is meant to be handled by the FCC. The justices also said political parties will be harmed if they do not get access to the same rates as a candidate.
“Current and future recissions will require the party committees to pay more for advertising space, thereby hampering their efforts to reach the electorate in the critical weeks leading up to the midterms,” the justices wrote.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented from the court’s opinion. She argued that the federal judge had proper authority to prevent a political party from accessing cheapter ad rates.
The high court ruling follows a June decision in National Republican Senatorial Committee v. FEC, which allowed campaign committees to spend in coordination with national party coalitions across the country, citing First Amendment rights.
“Because ‘virtually every means of communicating ideas in today’s mass society requires the expenditure of money,’ a ‘restriction on the amount of money a person or group can spend on political communication during a campaign necessarily reduces the quantity of expression by restricting the number of issues discussed, the depth of their exploration, and the size of the audience reached,"” Justice Brett Kavanaugh said.
The high court’s ruling gives more time for the NRSC to appeal the federal judge’s order and allows political paries to spend more freely ahead of the midterm elections.