Delay raises stakes in campaign-film case

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court signaled yesterday that it could overturn decades-old laws on how money is spent on federal elections, raising the stakes in a case involving a scathing documentary about Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The court was expected to release a decision on the Citizens United movie as part of its end-of-the-term wrapup, but in an unusual move, the justices said they would hear arguments in the case again in a special session Sept. 9.

Ahead of the rare session, the court told the lawyers in the case, Citizens United v. FEC, to focus their arguments on whether its earlier rulings banning certain political speech by corporations, and the corporate and union spending on television advertising during campaigns, should be overturned.

Advocates on both sides said the decision in the case is likely to shape federal elections for years to come.

Fred Wertheimer, president of the nonprofit group Democracy 21, said: "At stake in the Citizens United case now is whether the Supreme Court is going to take the radical step of striking down the 60-year-old ban on corporate expenditures and open the floodgates to immense amounts of corporate wealth being used to directly influence federal campaigns."

Steve Simpson, a lawyer with the public interest law firm Institute for Justice, said this was now "a blockbuster case about Americans' First Amendment rights to join together and speak freely about politics."

Citizens United, a conservative group, wanted to air ads last year for the anti-Clinton film Hillary: The Movie in competitive Democratic primary states and make it available on demand to cable subscribers without complying with federal campaign-finance law. At the time, Clinton was competing with Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination; she is now secretary of state.

But lower courts have said the movie looked and sounded like a long campaign ad, and therefore should be regulated like one, including identifying its financial backers.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy had warned during oral arguments March 24 that the nation's campaign-finance laws could be at stake. Government lawyers argued that the documentary was the same thing as a long campaign ad.

"If we think that the application of this to a 90-minute film is unconstitutional, then the whole statute should fall," Kennedy said.

The court's composition will be different by the time it rehears the case. Justice David H. Souter is retiring, and Obama has nominated federal appeals judge Sonia Sotomayor to his seat. Obama and Democrats hope the Senate confirms Sotomayor before the Sept. 9 court session. If it does, this would be the first case the court would hear with Sotomayor on the bench.