Quote (gnarjay @ Oct 23 2024 01:45pm)
you lost me there
Thats literally what citizens united was about
Citizens united argued michael moores fahrenheit 911 and its ads were illegal political spending by an outside group. FEC allowed it. So citizens united made their own movie, Celsius 41.1 (the temperature a brain fries) and Hillary: The Movie. The FEC banned them from being shown or advertised, and they challenged it in court
The scotus argument boiled down that the time constraints and money caps were arbitrary and didn't matter to the ability to restrict political speech. The argument the Obama administration made in court is that if a book had a single sentence criticizing a politician, the government would have the power to ban that book
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Arguments before the Supreme Court began on March 24, 2009.[9][18] During the original oral argument, Deputy Solicitor General Malcolm L. Stewart (representing the FEC) argued that under Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce in 1990, the government would have the power to ban books if those books contained even one sentence expressly advocating the election or defeat of a candidate and were published or distributed by a corporation or labor union.[19] Stewart further argued that under Austin the government could ban the digital distribution of political books over the Amazon Kindle or prevent a union from hiring an author to write a political book.[20]
It was a case to test whether the first amendment even exists