Supreme Court Will Hear Ted Cruz Campaign Finance Dispute

Via TTN:

The Supreme Court will hear Senator Ted Cruz’s legal challenge to federal limits on reimbursing candidates for personal loans made to their campaign.

The Hill reports:

At issue is a provision of federal election law that sets a $250,000 cap on the amount of post-election donation money that a campaign can use to repay a candidate’s personal loan.

The dispute over the federal limit arose after Cruz put $260,000 of his own money into his 2018 reelection campaign and sued the FEC in April 2019 as he attempted to pay off his debt.

In June, a federal three-judge district court panel in Washington, D.C., sided with Cruz, striking down rules limiting how much money candidates can raise after an election to pay off loans.

In an initial ruling, the court found the repayment cap violated Cruz’s First Amendment rights.

“Because the government has failed to demonstrate that the loan-repayment limit serves an interest in preventing quid pro quo corruption, or that the limit is sufficiently tailored to serve this purpose, the loan repayment limit runs afoul of the First Amendment,” wrote Judge Neomi Rao, a Trump appointee to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The move comes after a lower federal court sided with Cruz, prompting the Federal Election Commission (FEC) to file an appeal.