{"id":534,"date":"2012-06-16T17:18:54","date_gmt":"2012-06-16T17:18:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ncjolt.org\/\/?p=534"},"modified":"2020-06-04T20:54:27","modified_gmt":"2020-06-04T20:54:27","slug":"protecting-free-speech-in-electioneering-communications-fec-v-wisconsin-right-to-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/articles\/protecting-free-speech-in-electioneering-communications-fec-v-wisconsin-right-to-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Protecting Free Speech in Electioneering Communications: FEC v. Wisconsin Right To Life"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In June 2007, the United States Supreme Court ruled in <em>FEC. v. Wisconsin Right To Life (\u201cWRTL\u201d),<\/em> by a 5-4 decision, that section 203 of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (\u201cBCRA\u201d) was unconstitutional.\u00a0 The Court\u2019s majority, however, could not agree to why BCRA was unconstitutional.\u00a0 The opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts held that there is a distinction between \u201cissue advocacy\u201d and \u201cexpress advocacy\u201d in the context of federal elections, and it was constitutionally impermissible for them to be lumped together.\u00a0 The concurring opinion by Justice Scalia held section 203 never should have been upheld in <em>McConnell v. FEC<\/em>, and BCRA is facially unconstitutional.\u00a0 The effect of the <em>WRTL<\/em> decision is that corporations and unions may now broadcast issue ads on television and radio using their general treasury funds in the days leading up to a federal primary or general election.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In June 2007, the United States Supreme Court ruled in FEC. v. Wisconsin Right To Life (\u201cWRTL\u201d), by a 5-4 decision, that section 203 of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (\u201cBCRA\u201d) was unconstitutional.\u00a0 The Court\u2019s majority, however, could not agree to why BCRA was unconstitutional.\u00a0 The opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts held <a href=\"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/articles\/protecting-free-speech-in-electioneering-communications-fec-v-wisconsin-right-to-life\/\" class=\"more-link\">&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,25,28],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=534"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7821,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/534\/revisions\/7821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}