The Supreme Court granted emergency relief for Republicans in a dispute over rates for broadcast campaign advertisements in the run-up to elections.
The court granted the relief in an opinion on Friday, over dissent from Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.
The national GOP senatorial and congressional committees had launched an urgent bid to halt an appellate ruling that was poised to benefit Democrats ahead of the midterms.
Under federal law, it’s clear that candidates can get favorable rates, which are called the “lowest unit charge,” or LUC. But Republicans also wanted that treatment for political parties and joint fundraising committees with non-candidate members. The legal dispute is politically significant because Democratic candidates generally raise more money than their committees, and vice versa for Republicans.
The Federal Communications Commission under President Donald Trump took the GOP-friendly position, leading to a court challenge from four Democratic congressional candidates: Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia, Rep. Kristen McDonald Rivet of Michigan, former Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio and former Gov. Roy Cooper of North Carolina.
A divided three-judge panel sided with the Democrats, ruling that the LUC requirement and campaign finance laws “are clear that neither political parties nor joint fundraising committees with non-candidate members can be entitled to the LUC.” The decision by two Democratic-appointed judges in the majority came over dissent from a GOP appointee, who said he refused to “neuter a federal agency and seize imaginary jurisdiction only to disfavor the place of political parties in our democratic dialogue and to dampen the vigor of preelection political speech.”
The Republican committees cited that dissent in seeking emergency relief from the high court. In their application, they accused the appellate majority of rewriting the rules for political ads in the middle of an election season. They said broadcast stations have already rescinded favorable rates since the appellate ruling.
The Trump administration supported the GOP application, telling the high court that “candidates and political parties need immediate relief from the uncertainty created by the Fourth Circuit’s decision on the rates they need to pay for campaign advertising.”
The Democrats said that “rather than sowing confusion,” the appellate ruling “benefits the public interest by ensuring clarity and definitively determining the correct reading of the Communications Act’s requirements.”
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
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