Page:Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.pdf/72

8 reasoning has become so discredited that the Court cannot keep the precedent alive without jury-rigging new and different justifications to shore up the original mistake. See, e.g., Pearson v. Callahan, 555 U. S. ___, ___ (2009) (slip op., at 10); Montejo v. Louisiana, 556 U. S. ___, ___ (2009) (slip op., at 13) (stare decisis does not control when adherence to the prior decision requires “fundamentally revising its theoretical basis”).

These considerations weigh against retaining our decision in Austin. First, as the majority explains, that decision was an “aberration” insofar as it departed from the robust protections we had granted political speech in our earlier cases. Ante, at 39; see also Buckley, supra; ''First Nat. Bank of Boston v. Bellotti'', 435 U. S. 765 (1978). Austin undermined the careful line that Buckley drew to distinguish limits on contributions to candidates from limits on independent expenditures on speech. Buckley rejected the asserted government interest in regulating independent expenditures, concluding that “restrict[ing] the speech of some elements of our society in order to enhance the relative voice of others is wholly foreign to the First Amendment.” 424 U. S., at 48–49; see also Bellotti, supra, at 790–791; Citizens Against Rent Control/Coalition for Fair Housing v. Berkeley, 454 U. S. 290, 295 (1981). Austin, however, allowed the Government to prohibit these same expenditures out of concern for “the corrosive and distorting effects of immense aggregations of wealth” in the marketplace of ideas. 494 U. S., at 660. Austin’s reasoning was—and remains—inconsistent with Buckley’s explicit repudiation of any government interest in “equalizing the relative ability of individuals and groups to influence the outcome of elections.” 424 U. S., at 48–49.

Austin was also inconsistent with Bellotti’s clear rejec-