Posted on July 16, 2025 Share: On July 15, 2025, a magistrate judge of the U.S. District Court of Maine granted a permanent injunction to block a Maine state law that would end independent expenditure political action committees that can receive unlimited contributions (super PACs) in Maine. The law—arising out of a 2024 ballot measure that passed with overwhelming support of Maine voters—places no restrictions on expenditures, but does establish a $5,000 annual limit on contributions to super PACs. Maine voters recognized that unlimited contributions to super PACs create significant risk that candidates and contributors can and will engage in behind-the-scenes quid pro quo corruption by funneling payments through super PACs. Unlimited contributions also create the appearance of corruption, thereby undermining the legitimacy of our democracy. The law was immediately challenged by two super PACs. The magistrate judge, misapplying Supreme Court precedent, dismissing fifteen years of history, and without the benefit of a full trial, has granted a permanent injunction that blocks the law from going into effect. This ruling prevents Maine voters from protecting their elections from quid pro quo corruption. Maine voters should be applauded for their thoughtful, constitutional efforts to protect our democracy. Free Speech For People (FSFP) will continue to support this law through the appeals that will come. Background In its 2010 decision in Citizens United v. FEC, the Supreme Court held that limits on independent expenditures—expenditures made to support a candidate without coordination with that candidate—are unconstitutional. The ruling did not address contributions; indeed, in Citizens United and in cases since then, the Supreme Court has continued to distinguish between limits on political expenditures and limits on contributions, granting more protections to expenditures than contributions and subjecting contributions to a lesser standard of scrutiny. A few months after Citizens United, a lower court ruling, SpeechNow v. FEC, created super PACs by striking down a federal law that limited contributions to independent expenditure committees, now known as super PACs. It improperly collapsed the Supreme Court’s two-tiered system of analysis and concluded that because independent expenditure limits are unconstitutional, so too are contributions to super PACs. The decision was wrongly decided, never reviewed by the Supreme Court, and not binding precedent in Maine. Now—just fifteen years later—super PACs dominate Maine and U.S. elections, pour billions of dollars into our elections, have created powerful incentives for candidates and super PAC funders to engage in corrupt quid pro quo agreements, and have created such an appearance of corruption that it undermines voters’ faith in our elections and our democracy. In recognition of these risks, in November 2024, 75% of Maine voters passed Ballot Question 1, which prohibited annual contributions above $5,000 to independent expenditure PACs. Two Maine super PACs, Dinner Table Action and For Our Future, immediately sued to block the law. The parties—defendant officials of the Maine Commission on Governmental Ethics and Election Practices, nonpartisan intervenor EqualCitizens and other intervenor-defendants, and the plaintiff super PACs agreed to forgo an evidentiary hearing and to hold only oral argument on the merits of the case. The magistrate judge has now blocked the law from going into effect. The Magistrate Judge Misapplied the Law and Misunderstands Super PACs. Candidates and contributors can enter into quid pro quo agreements without involving the super PAC. The court claimed that contributions to independent expenditures “are one step further removed from the candidate” than the super PACs themselves, so “the logic of Citizens United dictates that the danger of corruption is smaller still.” The court’s rationale here wholly misunderstands the logic of Citizens United, which is concerned not with removal but with the purported independence of independent expenditures from candidates. The Supreme Court reasoned that because independent expenditures, by definition, cannot be coordinated with candidates, they therefore cannot give rise to corrupt quid pro quo agreements between a candidate and the entity that makes the expenditures. This logic does not apply to super PAC contributors. As Free Speech For People discussed in its amicus brief, super PACs create opportunities and incentives for candidates and contributors to engage in quid pro quo agreements. Contributions and expenditures are not subject to the same analysis. The Supreme Court uses a bifurcated system of analysis that both differentiates between contributions and expenditures, and subjects contribution limits to lesser standards of review than expenditure limits. Though the magistrate judge recognizes this, she relies almost wholly on non-binding lower court rulings that wrongly collapse the two and insists that Citizens United “forecloses limits on contributions” to super PACs. It does not. Citizens United only analyzes a law that limits expenditures. It said nothing about contributions. The lived experience of Maine voters should be considered when assessing whether unlimited super PAC contributions create the appearance of corruption. Maine voters understand how super PACs operate and why they create an appearance of corruption. Voters have spent fifteen years voting under a system increasingly dominated by megadonors funneling massive contributions through super PACs and receiving favor from our elected officials. Their experience and perspective should not be so casually dismissed in any analysis of the “appearance of corruption” inquiry. The disclosure portion of the law is constitutional. By striking down this reasonable disclosure law, the court further and unnecessarily hamstrings Maine’s efforts to protect its elections from corruption. Maine Voters Deserve Better. Maine voters got it right. FSFP will continue to defend this law and support all efforts to appeal this decision. Read the decision here. Read FSFP’s amicus brief in support of the law here.