'Millionaire's amendment' case heard

WASHINGTON — A law meant to level the financial playing field in political campaigns involving rich candidates met with a mixed reception on Tuesday in the Supreme Court.

The law, known as the "millionaire's amendment," imposes special rules in races with candidates who finance their own campaigns. Those candidates are required to disclose more information, and their opponents are allowed to raise more money.

The court has upheld campaign finance laws meant to drive the potentially corrupting influence of large contributions out of politics. But the millionaire's amendment, part of the 2002 McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, is animated by a different rationale: that of compensating for the additional financial resources available to candidates willing to spend their own money.

The law was a response to Supreme Court rulings that forbid limits on the amount that candidates can spend on their own behalf. Its purpose, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said Tuesday, was to combat "the perception that the seats in our Congress are there to be bought by the wealthiest bidder."

But that rationale, Justice Antonin Scalia said, has nothing to do with fighting corruption and should be viewed with suspicion on both constitutional and practical grounds.

"Who is more incorruptible than the millionaire, right?" Scalia asked.

The law allows opponents of candidates for the House of Representatives who spend more than $350,000 of their own money to receive triple the usual amounts — $6,900 rather than $2,300 — from individual contributors when a complex statutory formula is met. The law also waives limits on expenditures from political parties.

The case was brought by Jack Davis, a Democrat who twice ran for the House from western New York, spending or lending himself millions of dollars of his own money.

Davis said the law violated his rights to free speech and equal protection.

But several justices said he remained free to spend what he wanted to and to say what he liked.

"Your candidate isn't subject to any restriction at all on what he can spend, and his opponent is subject to less restrictions," Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. told Davis' lawyer, Andrew D. Herman. "It seems to me the First Amendment comes out better."