FEC v Citizens United Research Cards
What did Citizens United argue ?
Citizens United argued that: 1) Section 203 violates the First Amendment on its face and when applied to The Movie and its related advertisements 2) Sections 201 and 203 are also unconstitutional as applied to the circumstances. https://www.oyez.org/cases/2008/08-205
Who are Citizens United ?
Citizens United is a Political Action Committee (PAC) in Washington, D.C., and a Supreme Court case about election spending in which the aforementioned PAC was the plaintiff. Both lie at the center of a debate over the role corporations play in society. http://reclaimdemocracy.org/who-are-citizens-united/
Citizens United v FEC
Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission is a United States Supreme Court case involving Citizens United, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization, and whether the group's film critical of a political candidate could be defined as an "electioneering communication" under the 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, also known as the McCain-Feingold Act. Decided in 2010, in a 5-to-4 decision, the Supreme Court held that corporate funding of independent political broadcasts in candidate elections cannot be limited, because doing so would violate the First Amendment. https://ballotpedia.org/Citizens_United_v._Federal_Election_Commission
Who is the FEC ?
In 1975, Congress created the Federal Election Commission (FEC) to administer and enforce the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) - the statute that governs the financing of federal elections. The duties of the FEC, which is an independent regulatory agency, are to disclose campaign finance information, to enforce the provisions of the law such as the limits and prohibitions on contributions, and to oversee the public funding of Presidential elections. http://www.fec.gov/about.shtml
Primary reason for the case ?
In January 2008, Citizens United released a film entitled Hillary: The Movie. We refer to the film as Hillary. It is a 90-minute documentary about then-Senator Hillary Clinton, who was a candidate in the Democratic Party's 2008 Presidential primary elections. Hillary mentions Senator Clinton by name and depicts interviews with political commentators and other persons, most of them quite critical of Senator Clinton. Hillary was released in theaters and on DVD, but Citizens United wanted to increase distribution by making it available through video-on-demand. http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/08-205.html
