Thursday, April 3, 2014

Supreme Court Changes Campaign Finance Limits

Article: This week, a divided Supreme Court ruled on the legal limits of campaign contributions. (Kids: what does "campaign contributions" mean?) Until now, there have been two kinds of limits on campaign contributions: (1) the max amount you can give to a candidate, political party or political action committee during an election season and (2) in an election cycle, you can donate no more than $48,600 to all candidates combined and no more than $74,600 to all political parties and political action committees combined. A businessman disputed this second type, saying it interfered with his first amendment right to give to as many political candidates he wanted. The Court agreed, saying that the right to campaign contributions is a basic democratic right protected by the first amendment. The only type of restrictions Congress can make is if the contribution is a type of bribery, a direct exchange of money for an official service.
Kids: pretend you're the lawyers. Argue each side. Who do you think should have won?


No comments:

Post a Comment