This piece originally appeared in the Washington Examiner on January 22, 2025.
Tuesday marked 15 years since the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. The decision affirmed that people in the United States don’t lose their First Amendment right to speak about candidates merely by organizing into corporations or unions.
The ruling sparked intense controversy, with critics predicting it would corrupt U.S. democracy and allow corporate money to dominate our elections. These dire warnings have been proven wrong.
Far from enabling a corporate takeover of U.S. politics, the ruling enabled free speech. Since the ruling, publicly traded corporations have accounted for approximately 2% of political spending. The predicted flood of corporate dollars simply never materialized. Instead, we’ve seen a surge in small-dollar donations and grassroots engagement.
The effect of small-dollar donors in recent election cycles refuted the doomsayers’ predictions: President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign set records for small-donor fundraising despite being vastly outspent by rival Hillary Clinton. Former Vice President Kamala Harris raised close to half a billion dollars from small donors in 2024. Also, refuting the most dire predictions, we’ve seen that money cannot buy electoral victory, as the billion-dollar presidential campaigns of Harris and billionaire Michael Bloomberg proved.
Citizens United ushered in an era of unprecedented electoral competitiveness. Since 2010, control of the White House and Congress has changed parties in nearly every federal election, a sharp contrast to the political entrenchment that preceded it. Previously “safe” incumbents, such as former Reps. Eric Cantor and Joe Crowley, fell to outsider challengers who spent far less, and incumbent reelection rates have dropped below their pre-2010 levels of 94% or higher.
This heightened competition has energized voters. Midterm election participation surged to its highest level in a century in 2018, while the 2020 turnout was the highest for any presidential election since 1900. The 2022 midterm elections and 2024 presidential elections were close behind.
Too often, critics of Citizens United forget the problem at stake: Can the government prohibit an incorporated advocacy group from paying to advertise a documentary movie critical of a major presidential candidate? The court rightly recognized that the restriction struck at the heart of the First Amendment.
Today, Citizens United stands as a victory, not for corporate interests but for the fundamental principle that the remedy for speech with which we disagree is more speech, not government regulation.
Fifteen years of experience has shown that Citizens United’s critics are wrong and its proponents are right. The decision has allowed new, often important voices to be heard while protecting people’s right to hear those voices. Citizens United is one of the most important decisions of the century for protecting, fostering, and benefiting U.S. democracy.
