Supreme Court considers anti-Clinton movie

WASHINGTON -- When a special three-judge panel considered the scathingly critical Hillary: The Movie last year, the judges deemed it a campaign ad with the unmistakable message that people should vote against then-presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton because she "is unfit for office."

The conservative Citizens United, which produced the 90-minute movie partly with corporate funds, said it was merely making a documentary about the issues. The court rejected that argument and agreed with the Federal Election Commission that the movie was subject to campaign-financing law restricting when messages can be aired and advertised.

Now the issue is before the U.S. Supreme Court with the potential to greatly affect the regulation of political speech by corporate, labor and other big-money interests. If Citizens United wins its most sweeping argument, the result could be a flood of corporate money in upcoming elections.

If the Supreme Court curtails rulings of earlier decades allowing limits on big donors, the case could end up "a blockbuster," says Richard Hasen, a Loyola Law School-Los Angeles professor and election law expert. "For generations, federal law has limited the ability of corporations and unions to use their enormous wealth to influence federal elections. If (key court precedent) were reversed, I expect hundreds of millions of dollars of corporate and union money to pour into … races."

At its narrowest, the case to be argued Tuesday tests whether Hillary: The Movie is a corporate "electioneering" message so it could not have been shown, as Citizens United wanted, through a cable television video-on-demand service during the primary election season.

More broadly, the case tests government's ability to limit corporate and union spending without impinging First Amendment speech rights.

The dispute is the latest in a series of challenges to the 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, which passed after years of wrangling and is often known by the names of its lead Senate sponsors, Arizona Republican John McCain and Wisconsin Democrat Russ Feingold.