## Facts

- Arizona voters enacted the Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Act, creating a voluntary public financing option for state candidates.
- Participating candidates qualified by collecting small contributions and agreeing to spending and contribution limits.
- Participating candidates received an initial public grant for the campaign.
- The Act also provided additional public “matching funds” when spending in the race exceeded the participating candidate’s initial grant.
- Matching funds were triggered by the combined total of (i) a privately financed opponent’s expenditures (including personal funds) and (ii) independent expenditures supporting that privately financed candidate or opposing the publicly financed candidate.
- Once triggered, the participating candidate received roughly dollar-for-dollar additional funding, subject to a cap.
- Privately financed candidates and independent expenditure groups challenged the matching-funds mechanism as deterring their campaign spending to avoid generating funds for the opposing candidate.

## Issues

1. Whether the First Amendment permits a State to award additional public funds to a publicly financed candidate based on the campaign spending of a privately financed opponent and independent expenditure groups.
2. Whether such a matching-funds structure imposes a constitutionally significant burden on political speech by privately financed candidates and independent speakers.
3. Whether the scheme is justified by anticorruption interests or by encouraging participation in public financing.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court reversed the Ninth Circuit and held Arizona’s matching-funds provision unconstitutional.
- The Court ruled that the mechanism substantially burdened political speech by privately financed candidates and independent expenditure groups.
- The Court concluded the burden was not sufficiently justified by a compelling state interest under First Amendment scrutiny.
- The Court distinguished permissible public financing in general from a system that mechanically ties one side’s subsidy to the other side’s spending.
- A dissent would have upheld the provision, viewing it as increasing overall speech through subsidies and counter-speech.

## Legal Principles

- Campaign expenditures are protected political speech, and laws that deter spending decisions can impose a substantial First Amendment burden.
- A public financing system may not be structured to award reactive, opponent-linked subsidies that operate as a penalty on a speaker’s decision to spend more.
- The government may not justify burdens on political spending by an interest in leveling electoral opportunities or equalizing resources among candidates.
- Anticorruption interests (quid pro quo corruption or its appearance) do not justify an opponent-linked matching-funds scheme absent adequate tailoring.
- A matching-funds trigger based on independent expenditures burdens independent political speakers by making their spending directly generate financial support for the opposing candidate.

## Conclusion

The Court held that Arizona’s dollar-for-dollar matching-funds mechanism, keyed to a privately financed candidate’s and independent groups’ spending, substantially burdened political speech and lacked sufficient justification, rendering it invalid under the First Amendment.


Ariz. Free Enter. Club’s Freedom Club PAC v. Bennett, 564 U.S. 721 (2011)