Virginia could be one of the first states to deploy an underutilized tool in the road toward undoing the Supreme Court’s erroneous campaign finance rulings. Through a series of decisions — most famously in Citizens United — the Court warped the meaning of the First Amendment, flooding our elections with cash and empowering the wealthy few. This session, the Virginia General Assembly has the opportunity to oppose those misguided rulings and lay the groundwork for reform.
The Supreme Court’s string of flawed campaign finance rulings started with Buckley v. Valeo in 1976 and continued in other cases like Citizens United in 2010 and McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission in 2014. In these decisions, the Court turned the First Amendment on its head. The amendment was intended to prevent the resurgence of aristocracy by ensuring that every member of the political community can participate in self-government as equals. But the Court bastardized its protections to insulate wealthy donors and allow them to spend unlimited money, tilting political influence in their favor.
Since Citizens United, super PACs and wealthy donors have dominated the funding and even running of campaigns. In the 2024 election, just 10 individuals spent more than $481 million to support President Donald Trump — nearly half of all the money raised to support his candidacy. Vice President Kamala Harris also relied heavily on megadonors, as well as record spending by dark money groups that do not disclose their donors.
These trends are not unique to presidential elections. Spending in congressional races has ballooned since Citizens United, and even state and local campaigns have become more expensive. Last year, Virginia’s gubernatorial race broke spending records at $105 million, making it the second most expensive race in state history. The attorney general race, too, cost a staggering $40 million, breaking national spending records. The main reason for this increased spending? Massive spending from megadonors and outside groups from across the country.
Despite the explosion of money in politics, the Court’s majority has shown little interest in revisiting its past decisions. But in the state that pioneered the model for the First Amendment, with 1786’s Statute on Religious Freedom, lawmakers can restore the original intent of the amendment and establish a new blueprint for campaign finance reform.
The General Assembly is considering a bill, S.B. 688, that would begin to push back on the Supreme Court’s manipulation of the First Amendment. The measure would impose reasonable limits on political spending and curb the cost of elections. These limits would be quickly struck down under the Supreme Court’s mistaken interpretation of the First Amendment, except for one thing: the bill is a “trigger law.” This means that the law will not take effect until Citizens United is overturned, so courts can’t strike it down. Until then, the bill would allow Virginia to tell the Court that its understanding of the First Amendment is wrong.
History teaches us how effective this strategy can be. As far back as 1991, antiabortion activists identified trigger laws as part of an “incremental strategy” to chip away at Roe v. Wade. By the time of the Dobbs decision in 2022, which ended federal protections for abortion, 13 states had trigger laws on the books — intentionally unconstitutional restrictions or prohibitions on abortion that sprang into effect once Roe was struck down. Antiabortion strategists said that these trigger laws “creat[ed] an environment that reveals a growing political will to” overturn Roe. And in Dobbs itself, the Supreme Court cited the existence of state laws challenging Roe as a reason to overturn that precedent.
Trigger laws are just one avenue for restoring some sanity to our campaign finance laws. In the meantime, states can and should limit how much individuals can give directly to candidates to prevent the appearance or reality of corruption, establish small-donor matching programs to amplify the voices of constituents across income levels, and enforce strong disclosure rules so voters know who is paying to influence policy decisions. Combined with trigger laws, these tools would allow lawmakers to improve elections now while building a movement for sweeping legal change in the future.
Given its history with the First Amendment, that momentum should start with Virginia passing S.B. 688.
