State regulators are beginning to grapple with the implications of the Supreme Court’s recent decision in National Republican Senatorial Committee v. FEC (“NRSC”). Minnesota may have provided the first clear example of how the ruling could reshape state campaign finance regimes. On June 30, the Supreme Court struck down the federal limits on coordinated party expenditures, holding that political parties have a First Amendment right to spend unlimited amounts in coordination with candidates and rejecting the argument that such limits are necessary to prevent corruption. Although the Court did not directly address limits on party-to-candidate contributions or in-kind contributions, the decision immediately raised questions about the constitutionality of such limits, particularly in jurisdictions that, unlike federal law, do not distinguish between coordinated expenditures and in-kind contributions. Minnesota’s response suggests that answers may be arriving sooner than expected.
The Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board announced on July 9 that, in light of NRSC, it would no longer count in-kind contributions from “political party units” against the aggregate limit on how much party units can contribute to candidates. Before NRSC, both monetary and in-kind contributions counted against that cap; going forward, only monetary contributions from parties will count, while in-kind support and party expenditures coordinated with candidates will not.
That development is notable because NRSC was framed as a case about coordinated expenditures, not contribution limits. Indeed, the Court took pains to explain that its decision did not directly disturb the broader framework of contribution regulation. Minnesota nevertheless appears to have concluded that the constitutional logic extends to bar limits on party expenditures coordinated with candidates. That conclusion highlights a tension in the Court’s opinion: regulators have long treated coordinated expenditures as contributions because they provide direct value to candidates, but the NRSC majority treated such spending as core political speech and held that restricting it is not necessary to prevent quid pro quo corruption, a premise that makes it harder to justify counting coordinated expenditures against contribution limits.
Minnesota’s guidance does not eliminate all restrictions on party support for candidates. The Board emphasized that the state’s anti-earmarking and anti-circumvention rules—which the Supreme Court identified as important tools for preventing donors from routing excessive contributions through parties—remain fully in effect. Even so, Minnesota’s action may be an early sign of where post-NRSC disputes are headed. Defenders of the coordinated party limits warned the Court that striking the limits in NRSC would lead to a chain reaction of deregulation ending in the elimination of party-to-candidate contribution limits, and litigants challenging similar state laws now have a regulator’s interpretation supporting that view. The significance is not simply that one state revised its enforcement posture, but that the first regulatory response to NRSC treats the decision as reaching beyond the specific limits at issue in the case, suggesting the boundary between coordinated expenditures and contributions may be difficult to maintain, and that NRSC could mark the start of a broader reassessment of how campaign finance law regulates support flowing from parties to candidates. Minnesota appears to be the first jurisdiction testing that proposition, but it is unlikely to be the last.