LAUREN BURKE/AP Citizens United President David Bossie, right, meets with reporters outside the U.S. Supreme Court in this file photo.

HARRISBURG — This year marks the 15th anniversary of a landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling that fundamentally reshaped the world of campaign finance.

For good-government supporters, it’s a somber milestone.

The 2010 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, they say, vastly expanded the role of big money in politics and ushered in an era of unprecedented — and in some cases, untraceable — spending on elections by ultra-wealthy special interests.

“It is difficult to overstate how much the campaign finance system changed because of this decision,” said Saurav Ghosh, director of federal campaign finance reform at the Campaign Legal Center, which supports more restrictive campaign finance laws. “It set in motion a sequence of dramatic changes.”

Here are key points about the case and its lasting impact:

What was

the case about?

In 2008, the conservative nonprofit Citizens United produced a film critical of then-U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton, who was running for the Democratic presidential nomination. The group planned to promote the film and release it within 30 days of the primary elections, but feared it would run afoul of federal laws banning corporate-funded “electioneering communications.”

The nonprofit sued, and the case eventually landed before the U.S. Supreme Court.

What did the U.S. Supreme Court

decide?

Though the question before the Supreme Court was narrow — Citizens United had argued the ban was unconstitutional as it related to the film and its promotion — the justices cut a broader swath in their 5-4 decision.

They overturned a prohibition that prevented corporations and unions from independently spending money to influence elections, finding it violated the First Amendment’s protection of free speech. They ruled that those protections extend to corporations and unions, which have the right to engage in political speech like individuals.

The majority rejected reasoning, established in a prior court case, that the government has an interest in limiting the “corrosive” effects of large corporate expenditures in the political process.

The court held that independent spending by corporations did not pose a substantial risk of corruption because it is not coordinated with individual candidates or political parties, and the money is not given directly to them.

The justices also ruled that existing transparency rules would allow voters to discern which donors are behind the political messaging targeting them — a prediction that campaign finance experts say ended up being grossly off the mark.

What happened in the wake of the decision?

In short, it opened the floodgates for extraordinary amounts of spending by outside groups, many of them bankrolled by wealthy individuals or firms seeking to influence public policy.

The result has been record campaign spending, making running for public office a daunting proposition for anyone who can’t access those dollars.

The money is frequently funneled through super PACs and so-called dark money groups. Unlike traditional candidate or party committees, super PACs are allowed to raise unlimited amounts of cash from corporations and wealthy individuals. They can also spend unlimited amounts of money to benefit a party or candidate, as long as they don’t coordinate with or give directly to them.

Super PACs are required to report donors to the FEC, and that information is publicly available. Still, good government groups say the federal agency has failed to enforce rules prohibiting coordination.

Dark money groups, including those formally known as social welfare organizations, are nonprofits that are permitted to engage in some political activity, as long as that is not their primary purpose.

These groups file tax records with the Internal Revenue Service, where the public can gather some information about their expenditures. But they are not required to make donor information public.

Ghosh, of the Campaign Legal Center, said in recent years, deep-pocketed donors who want to remain anonymous give to dark money groups; those groups, in turn, give to super PACs, further diluting the expected transparency in the system.

In Pennsylvania, the court decision’s impact on races for state and local offices was muted — at least early on.

That is because of Pennsylvania’s notoriously lax campaign finance laws. Unlike the federal government, the state places no limits on how much money donors can give candidates and political action committees, making it unnecessary for deep-pocketed special interests to give to super PACs to avoid hitting those limits.

Still, even those lax rules haven’t prevented big-dollar spending by dark money groups, which are ideal for giving by donors who don’t want their identities (or campaign contribution amounts) made public in campaign finance filings.

During the 2022 governor’s race between Gov. Josh Shapiro and Republican challenger Doug Mastriano, a state senator from Franklin County, spending by outside groups topped $2.5 million. That spending came from both super PACs and dark money groups.

Is there any

turning back?

Members of Congress have introduced bills to require more transparency, including legislation to force dark money groups to disclose the names of their donors and require enforcement of existing rules prohibiting coordination between super PACs and candidate campaigns.

In Pennsylvania, a bill introduced in the last legislative session by state Reps. Malcolm Kenyatta and Jared Solomon would have required certain dark money groups (those designated as social welfare nonprofits) to report any political spending to the state.

Some nonprofits already do so, but the state’s campaign finance law doesn’t explicitly require nonprofits to file these reports, something the bill would change.

The legislation passed the Democratic-controlled state House 127-74 last year, but wasn’t considered by the Republican-led state Senate.

“I think there is a general perception that Citizens United is the problem and until we get rid of it, we won’t have a stronger system,” said Ghosh. “I would love to see it overturned, but that is not the first and last step in campaign finance reform. There are incremental steps that need political support that could make things better.”

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