[JURIST] The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia [official website] on Tuesday upheld [opinion, PDF] a 75-year-long policy prohibiting individuals, corporations or firms working under federal contracts from contributing to the campaigns of federal candidates, parties and committees. Plaintiffs in the case, three individuals who have held federal contracts and were previously barred from making campaign contributions, argued that the prohibition violated their rights to free speech and equal protection. Writing for the en banc court, Chief Judge Merrick Garland stated that the prohibition did not result in any violation of such rights, as “the concerns that spurred the original bar remain as important today as when the statute was enacted.” The court held that the law banning the contributions [text, PDF] is “closely drawn to avoid unnecessary abridgment of associational freedoms.”

The financing of national and state elections [JURIST backgrounder] has been a political topic in the US since the early nineteenth century. The DC Circuit decision follows a previous Supreme Court decision, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission [SCOTUS backgrounder] which held that corporations or unions may not give money directly to campaigns. In his 2010 State of the Union speech, US President Barack Obama [official website] criticized [JURIST backgrounder] the decision’s possible effect on the power of special interest groups, and as well as the creation of a gap in public knowledge of the “dark money” spent by corporations. Since then, Obama has proposed an Executive Order [text, PDF] that would combat the gap he denounced. Opponents of today’s decision believe [Forbes report] that it will “boost” the Executive Order.