Supreme Court To Hear Ted Cruz's Challenge To Campaign Finance Reimbursement Rules
AUSTIN (CBSDFW.COM/CNN) — Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz is challenging a federal election law and now the US Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case.
The case centers around Cruz's 2018 campaign and will have the Justices considering whether regulations that limit money that committees can raise after the election to reimburse loans made before the election are just.
A lower court ruled in favor of Cruz, holding that a loan-repayment restriction under federal campaign finance law violates the First Amendment.
Federal law allows candidates to make loans to their campaign committees without limit. The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, however, imposes a $250,000 limit on a campaign committee's ability to repay those loans with money contributed by donors after the election.
In his 2018 campaign for the US Senate, the Texas Republican loaned his campaign $260,000 -- $10,000 over the limit. As things stand, the committee is unable to pay him the remaining $10,000 on the loan.
Lawyers for Cruz told the Supreme Court in briefs that the law "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."
In his lawsuit, Cruz argued that the law imposed "arbitrary restrictions on core political speech."
The Biden administration supports the limits, noting that the loan was made with the "sole and exclusive motivation" to trigger the lawsuit.
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