A federal judge in Portland gutted Maine's voter-approved ballot initiative capping super PAC donations at $5,000 per person or entity, ruling the restrictions violated the First Amendment "because there is no set of circumstances where they could be applied constitutionally." The case now sits before the First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston — and the outcome could ripple through campaign finance law well before the 2028 presidential race.
Judge Karen Frink Wolf didn't leave much ambiguity in her ruling. She reasoned that if the government's interest in combating the appearance of corruption wasn't enough to justify limits on independent expenditures — the core holding of Citizens United — then it couldn't justify limits on contributions to those expenditures either:
"If the government's interest in combatting the appearance of corruption was not enough to justify limits on independent expenditures, it stands to reason that the same interest is not enough to justify limits on contributions to independent expenditures."
According to the New York Post, Maine voters approved the initiative in 2024 by a margin of almost three-to-one. Harvard Law professor Lawrence Lessig, who leads the legal defense through the nonprofit Equal Citizens, is banking on that popular mandate to carry the appeal. But popularity and constitutionality have never been the same thing — and seven other appeals courts have already spoken on this question.
The legal architecture here is well-established and unfriendly to Lessig's project. The Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United decision eliminated federal limits on individual or corporate spending in elections. Two months later, the D.C. Circuit ruled that "the government has no anti-corruption interest in limiting contributions to an independent expenditure group." According to a brief filed by the Institute for Free Speech, at least seven other appeals courts have unanimously slapped down independent-expenditure contribution limits as unconstitutional since then.
Charles Miller, senior attorney at the Institute for Free Speech, didn't mince words about the Maine effort's prospects:
"I give it a 0% chance of success. This is essentially repackaging old arguments that have failed over and over again."
Miller acknowledged the campaign had improved its presentation — but not its substance:
"They've added more splash to it this time and a little bit more sort of a PR polish to it, but it's the same substantive arguments."
That assessment tracks with the legal record. This isn't a novel theory winding through uncharted territory. It's a well-worn path that ends the same way every time.
Lessig's strategy is more interesting than his odds suggest. He isn't asking the Supreme Court to reverse Citizens United. He's arguing the Court should apply its own reasoning — that where a risk of corruption exists, government can regulate — to super PAC contributions specifically:
"The Supreme Court's not going to reverse Citizens United. Indeed, all it has to do is to apply the reasoning of Citizens United because what Citizens United said is … if there's a risk of corruption, you can regulate."
He described Judge Wolf's ruling as "the most extreme opinion ever in the history of the federal judiciary," claiming it found that "even if you can see there's a risk of corruption, there's nothing the state can do about it." That's a bold characterization — and the fact sheet provides no independent verification of it.
Lessig also conceded a critical limitation of his own initiative. Even if the $5,000 cap survived judicial review, it wouldn't touch the wealthiest political actors:
"What we won't achieve is the end of the opportunity for somebody like George Soros … or Elon Musk to spend money independently on their own."
Read that again. The initiative's own champion admits that billionaires would remain free to spend whatever they want on independent political speech. The cap would only restrict how much ordinary people could contribute to organizations that pool resources.
This is where the populist case for the Maine initiative collapses — and where conservatives should pay close attention.
Former FEC Chairman Allen Dickerson identified the core problem. Contribution limits on political committees sound appealing in the abstract, he noted, but the downstream consequences fall hardest on the people who lack independent wealth:
"The billionaires and the multi-millionaires and the big organizations would still be able to do that directly."
Middle-class Americans can't buy television ads on their own. They pool money through organizations — super PACs included — to amplify their voice. A $5,000 cap doesn't level the playing field. It removes the field entirely for anyone who isn't already wealthy enough to play alone.
Dickerson pressed the constitutional logic further:
"If an individual can spend unlimited funds to elect a candidate — independently, again, of that candidate, not a contribution — then it must be true that you can create organizations that pool people's money."
He also warned that the principle wouldn't stop at super PACs:
"But if you think about where that thinking leads, it is not obvious that these contribution limits would only apply to political committees and not to other ideological organizations."
That's the trapdoor. Once you accept that the government can cap how much citizens contribute to independent political speech organizations, there's no principled barrier preventing the same logic from reaching advocacy groups, issue campaigns, or any entity that spends money to influence public debate.
Lessig leans heavily on the democratic mandate. He told reporters the initiative proved this is "a deeply purple issue" with "no difference in the results in red districts or blue districts." He invoked the scale of the vote itself:
"The largest number of people to vote for anything in the history of Maine have said they don't want super PACs."
Then he posed a question that sounds compelling until you think about it for five seconds:
"Why do five justices on the Supreme Court get to disagree with that when they're not relying on anything we the people ever did in enacting our Constitution?"
This is the oldest dodge in constitutional law. Popular majorities do not get to vote away First Amendment protections. That's the entire point of having a Constitution. Maine could pass a ballot initiative banning newspapers from endorsing candidates by a margin of ten-to-one, and it would be just as unconstitutional the morning after the vote as the morning before.
The Bill of Rights exists precisely to prevent majorities from silencing minorities. Lessig — a Harvard Law professor — knows this. The rhetorical appeal to popular sovereignty over constitutional structure isn't legal reasoning. It's a campaign pitch dressed in academic robes.
Super PACs raised more than $5.1 billion in 2024. Tens of billions have flowed into campaigns since Citizens United in 2010. Those numbers unsettle people across the political spectrum, and not without reason. The scale of money in politics creates legitimate questions about influence and access.
But the Miller and Dickerson analysis cuts to the heart of the matter: restricting pooled political speech doesn't reduce the influence of the powerful. It concentrates it. The billionaire still writes checks. The corporate behemoth still runs ads. The only voices that go quiet are the ones that needed to combine resources to be heard in the first place.
The conservative position here isn't pro-corruption. It's pro-speech. And it recognizes something the campaign finance reform movement refuses to confront — that every restriction marketed as limiting the powerful lands squarely on the powerless.
The First Circuit will weigh in. The Supreme Court may eventually take up Dinner Table Action v. Schneider. But the constitutional math hasn't changed since Citizens United, and no amount of PR polish rewrites the First Amendment.