Citizens United Case

Citizens United Vs. Federal Election Commission
The legal system has been developing over many years. During each year there are cases that occur which make large impacts on today's world. In the United States, we have three different types of courts. The district court has jurisdiction over cases that include civil and criminal actions. Appeal courts settle cases in which both parties are unsatisfied with district court ruling and the Supreme Court is the highest of them all. The Supreme Court receives cases from the lower courts that have not been resolved. Cases that make it to the supreme court tend to make a big impact on today and sometimes change laws or encourage the government to make a new law. An example of a case that made it to …show more content…
This case was developed from the dissatisfaction of citizens united with the federal election commission in the district court of Columbia. Citizens united's goal from the case was to prevent the application of the bipartisan campaign reform act on their production Hillary: The Movie. The bipartisan campaign reform act restricted national political parties, federal candidates, and office holders from receiving soft money in federal elections. Soft money is classified as funds given from others that are not regulated by the campaign finance law. Having outside resources enlarges the candidate's campaign party. Hillary: The Movie was being used to express why Hillary Clinton should be a candidate for the United States President. The promotion from this movie would persuade large companies to support her which would give her "big money" for her campaign. This was not prohibited by section 203 of the BCRA. Section 203 of the reform act states that corporations and labor unions cannot fund campaigns, making the movie against the …show more content…
In the first amendment, citizens are given the right to have freedom of religion, expression, assembly, and the right to petition. With section 203 of the BCRA restricting one's rights to express their opinion on Hilary Clinton's ability to be president, United Nations felt that the reform act was unconstitutional. Although this may look to be true it was found that the section 203 was not unconstitutional. The reason being is that it was found constitutional in the McConnell versus federal election commission case. The element from the production that may have been unconstitutional was that the donors who were funding the movie was not being disclosed, which does not comply with section 203. The question of who the donors are were not factored into this case because the initial argument was about the movie. The movie by itself was not unconstitutional being that it was equivalent to expression advocacy and the outcome of the movie was not what it was thought to be. When one thinks of the movie being a part of a campaign it is automatically assumed that it will speak high of the candidate, but this movie actually ended up doing the opposite. With that, the section 203 was not violated when applied to the movie only. If United Nations were to create an argument about which donors were funding the movie the results may have been different. Since the district court denied the injunction an

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