24 States' Laws Open to Attack After Campaign Finance Ruling

A day after the United States Supreme Court ruled that the federal government may not ban political spending by corporations or unions in candidate elections, officials across the country were rushing to cope with the fallout, as laws in 24 states were directly or indirectly called into question by the ruling.

"One day the Constitution of Colorado is the highest law of the state," said Robert F. Williams, a law professor at Rutgers University. "The next day it's wastepaper." The states that explicitly prohibit independent expenditures by unions and corporations will be most affected by the ruling.

The decision, however, has consequences for all states, since they are now effectively prohibited from adopting restrictions on corporate and union spending on political campaigns. In his dissent to the 5-to-4 ruling, Justice John Paul Stevens highlighted the burden placed on states. "The court operates with a sledgehammer rather than a scalpel when it strikes down one of Congress's most significant efforts to regulate the role that corporations and unions play in electoral politics," he wrote. "It compounds the offense by implicitly striking down a great many state laws as well."