(JustPatriots.com)- The Supreme Court decided that they will hear a case that has to do with the 2018 campaign of Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz.
Following its decision, the high court will now hear arguments about regulations that limit the money committees can raise following elections that are then used to reimburse loans that were made before that same election.
Lower courts have ruled in Cruz’s favor. They have said that the restriction on loan repayments that are held currently under campaign finance law is actually in violation of the First Amendment to the Constitution.
According to federal law, candidates are allowed to extend loans to their campaign committees, and there is no limit on doing so. However, the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 does impost a limit on the ability of the campaign committee to repay the loans through money they raise from donors after an election takes place.
While Cruz was running for U.S. Senate in 2018, he loaned his election campaign a total of $260,000. That total was $10,000 over the limit set under the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002.
Right now, his campaign committee can’t pay back the remaining $10,000 that is on that loan.
One of Cruz’s spokesman sent a statement this week to CNN that read:
“Existing FEC (Federal Elections Commission) rules benefit incumbent politicians and the super wealthy by making it harder for challengers to run for office. We’re confident the Supreme Court will again rule in favor of the First Amendment and free speech.”
Lawyers for Cruz filed a motion August 6 that argued the law deters all political candidates from issuing loans to their campaign, since it restricts their ability to ever get that money back. They wrote:
“To be sure, the loans may still be repaid in full with funds raised prior to the election, but there can be no question that Section 304’s limit — by substantially increasing the risk that any candidate loan will never be fully repaid — forces a candidate to think twice before making those loans in the first place.”
The Texas senator argued further in his lawsuit that the law imposed “arbitrary restrictions on core political speech.”
The Biden administration, meanwhile supports upholding the act and the limits it imposes. The administration has even accused Cruz of making the loan with the “sole and exclusive motivation” to trigger this lawsuit he has filed.
The law was passed in 2002 by Congress to prevent any appearance of a “quid pro quo” corruption. However, the government hasn’t yet proven how the law achieves the stated goal.
As Neomi Rao, who authored the opinion for the three-judge panel of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, wrote:
“Because the government has failed to demonstrate that the loan-repayment limit serves an interest in preventing quid pro quo corruption, or that the limit is sufficiently tailored to serve this purpose, the loan repayment limit runs afoul of the First Amendment.”
