Citizens United v. FEC (2010)

130 S.Ct. 876 (2010) CITIZENS UNITED, Appellant, v. FEDERAL ELECTION COMMISSION. No. 08-205. Supreme Court of United States. Argued March 24, 2009. Decided January 21, 2010. Reargued September 9, 2009. *886 Theodore B. Olson, for Appellant. Floyd Abrams, for Senator Mitch McConnell as amicus curiae, by special leave of the Court, supporting the Appellant. Elena Kagan, Solicitor General, Washington, D.C., for Respondent. Seth P. Waxman, for Senator John McCain, as amici curiae, by special leave of the Court, supporting the Appellee. Michael Boos, Fairfax, VA, Theodore B. Olson, Matthew D. McGill, Amir C. Tayrani, Justin S. Herring, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP, Washington, D.C., for Appellant. Justice KENNEDY delivered the opinion of the Court. Federal law prohibits corporations and unions from using their general treasury funds to make independent expenditures for speech defined as an "electioneering communication" or for speech expressly advocating the election or defeat of a candidate. 2 U.S.C. § 441b. Limits on electioneering communications were upheld in McConnell v. Federal Election Comm'n, 540 U.S. 93, 203-209 , 124 S.Ct. 619 , 157 L.Ed.2d 491 (2003). The holding of McConnell rested to a large extent on an earlier case, Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, 494 U.S. 652 , 110 S.Ct. 1391 , 108 L.Ed.2d 652 (1990). Austin had held that political speech may be banned based on the speaker's corporate identity. In this case we are asked to reconsider Austin and, in effect, McConnell . It has been noted that " Austin was a significant departure from ancient First Amendment principles," Federal Election Comm'n v. Wisconsin Right to Life, Inc., 551 U.S. 449, 490 , 127 S.Ct. 2652 , 168 L.Ed.2d 329 (2007) (WRTL) (SCALIA, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment). We agree with that conclusion and hold that stare decisis does not compel the continued acceptance of Austin . The Government may regulate corporate political speech through disclaimer and disclosure requirements, but it may not suppress that speech altogether. We turn to the case now before us. I A Citizens United is a nonprofit corporation. It brought this action in the United States District Court for the District of *887 Columbia. A three-judge court later convened to hear the cause. The resulting judgment gives rise to this appeal. Citizens United has an annual budget of about $12 million. Most of its funds are from donations by individuals; but, in addition, it accepts a small portion of its funds from for-profit corporations. In January 2008, Citizens United released a film entitled Hillary: The Movie. We refer to the film as Hillary. It is a 90-minute documentary about then-Senator Hillary Clinton, who was a candidate in the Democratic Party's 2008 Presidential primary elections. Hillary mentions Senator Clinton by name and depicts interviews with political commentators and other persons, most of them quite critical of Senator Clinton. Hillary was released in theaters and on DVD, but Citizens United wanted to increase distribution by making it available through video-on-demand. Video-on-demand allows digital cable subscribers to select programming from various menus, including movies, television shows, sports, news, and music. The viewer can watch the program at any time and can elect to rewind or pause the program. In December 2007, a cable company offered, for a payment of $1.2 million, to make Hillary available on a video-on-demand channel called "Elections '08." App. 255a-257a. Some video-on-demand services require viewers to pay a small fee to view a selected program, but here the proposal was to make Hillary available to viewers free of charge. To implement the proposal, Citizens United was prepared to pay for the video-on-demand; and to promote the film, it produced two 10-second ads and one 30-second ad for Hillary. Each ad includes a short (and, in our view, pejorative) statement about Senator Clinton, followed by the name of the movie and the movie's Website address. Id., at 26a-27a. Citizens United desired to promote the video-on-demand offering by running advertisements on broadcast and cable television. B Before the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (BCRA), federal law prohibited—and still does prohibit— corporations and unions from using general treasury funds to make direct contributions to candidates or independent expenditures that expressly advocate the election or defeat of a candidate, through any form of media, in connection with certain qualified federal elections. 2 U.S.C. § 441b (2000 ed.); see McConnell, supra, at 204 , and n. 87, 124 S.Ct. 619 ; Federal Election Comm'n v. Massachusetts Citizens for Life, Inc., 479 U.S. 238, 249 , 107 S.Ct. 616 , 93 L.Ed.2d 539 (1986) (MCFL). BCRA § 203 amended § 441b to prohibit any "electioneering communication" as well. 2 U.S.C. § 441b(b)(2) (2006 ed.). An electioneering communication is defined as "any broadcast, cable, or satellite communication" that "refers to a clearly identified candidate for Federal office" and is made within 30 days of a primary or 60 days of a general election. § 434(f)(3)(A). The Federal Election Commission's (FEC) regulations further define an electioneering communication as a communication that is "publicly distributed." 11 CFR § 100.29 (a)(2) (2009). "In the case of a candidate for nomination for President ... publicly distributed means" that the communication "[c]an be received by 50,000 or more persons in a State where a primary election ... is being held within 30 days." § 100.29(b)(3)(ii). Corporations and unions are barred from using their general treasury funds for express advocacy or electioneering communications. They may establish, however, a "separate segregated fund" (known as a political action committee, or PAC) for these purposes. 2 U.S.C. *888 § 441b(b)(2). The moneys received by the segregated fund are limited to donations from stockholders and employees of the corporation or, in the case of unions, members of the union. Ibid. C Citizens United wanted to make Hillary available through video-on-demand within 30 days of the 2008 primary elections. It feared, however, that both the film and the ads would be covered by § 441b's ban on corporate-funded independent expenditures, thus subjecting the corporation to civil and criminal penalties under § 437g. In December 2007, Citizens United sought declaratory and injunctive relief against the FEC. It argued that (1) § 441b is unconstitutional as applied to Hillary; and (2) BCRA's disclaimer and disclosure requirements, BCRA §§ 201 and 311, are unconstitutional as applied to Hillary and to the three ads for the movie. The District Court denied Citizens United's motion for a preliminary injunction, 530 F.Supp.2d 274 (D.D.C.2008) (per curiam), and then granted the FEC's motion for summary judgment, App. 261a-262a. See id., at 261a ("Based on the reasoning of our prior opinion, we find that the [FEC] is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. See Citizen[s] United v. FEC, 530 F.Supp.2d 274 (D.D.C.2008) (denying Citizens United's request for a preliminary injunction)"). The court held that § 441b was facially constitutional under McConnell , and that § 441b was constitutional as applied to Hillary because it was "susceptible of no other interpretation than to inform the electorate that Senator Clinton is unfit for office, that the United States would be a dangerous place in a President Hillary Clinton world, and that viewers should vote against her." 530 F.Supp.2d, at 279 . The court also rejected Citizens United's challenge to BCRA's disclaimer and disclosure requirements. It noted that "the Supreme Court has written approvingly of disclosure provisions triggered by political speech even though the speech itself was constitutionally protected under the First Amendment." Id., at 281 . We noted probable jurisdiction. 555 U.S. ___ , 128 S.Ct. 1471 , 170 L.Ed.2d 294 (2008). The case was reargued in this Court after the Court asked the parties to file supplemental briefs addressing whether we should overrule either or both Austin and the part of McConnell which addresses the facial validity of 2 U.S.C. § 441b. See 557 U.S. ___ , 128 S.Ct. 1732 , 170 L.Ed.2d 511 (2009). II Before considering whether Austin should be overruled, we first address whether Citizens United's claim that § 441b cannot be applied to Hillary may be resolved on other, narrower grounds. A Citizens United contends that § 441b does not cover Hillary, as a matter of statutory interpretation, because the film does not qualify as an "electioneering communication." § 441b(b)(2). Citizens United raises this issue for the first time before us, but we consider the issue because "it was addressed by the court below." Lebron v. National Railroad Passenger Corporation, 513 U.S. 374, 379 , 115 S.Ct. 961 , 130 L.Ed.2d 902 (1995); see 530 F.Supp.2d, at 277, n. 6 . Under the definition of electioneering communication, the video-on-demand showing of Hillary on cable television would have been a "cable... communication" that "refer[red] to a clearly identified candidate for Federal office" and that was made within 30 days of a primary election. 2 U.S.C. § 434 (f)(3)(A)(i). Citizens United, however, argues that Hillary was not "publicly *889 distributed," because a single video-on-demand transmission is sent only to a requesting cable converter box and each separate transmission, in most instances, will be seen by just one household—not 50,000 or more persons. 11 CFR § 100.29 (a)(2); see § 100.29(b)(3)(ii). This argument ignores the regulation's instruction on how to determine whether a cable transmission "[c]an be received by 50,000 or more persons." § 100.29(b)(3)(ii). The regulation provides that the number of people who can receive a cable transmission is determined by the number of cable subscribers in the relevant area. §§ 100.29(b)(7)(i)(G), (ii). Here, Citizens United wanted to use a cable video-on-demand system that had 34.5 million subscribers nationwide. App. 256a. Thus, Hillary could have been received by 50,000 persons or more. One amici brief asks us, alternatively, to construe the condition that the communication "[c]an be received by 50,000 or more persons," § 100.29(b)(3)(ii)(A), to require "a plausible likelihood that the communication will be viewed by 50,000 or more potential voters"—as opposed to requiring only that the communication is "technologically capable" of being seen by that many people, Brief for Former Officials of the American Civil Liberties Union as Amici Curiae 5. Whether the population and demographic statistics in a proposed viewing area consisted of 50,000 registered voters—but not "infants, pre-teens, or otherwise electorally ineligible recipients"— would be a required determination, subject to judicial challenge and review, in any case where the issue was in doubt. Id., at 6. In our view the statute cannot be saved by limiting the reach of 2 U.S.C. § 441b through this suggested interpretation. In addition to the costs and burdens of litigation, this result would require a calculation as to the number of people a particular communication is likely to reach, with an inaccurate estimate potentially subjecting the speaker to criminal sanctions. The First Amendment does not permit laws that force speakers to retain a campaign finance attorney, conduct demographic marketing research, or seek declaratory rulings before discussing the most salient political issues of our day. Prolix laws chill speech for the same reason that vague laws chill speech: People "of common intelligence must necessarily guess at [the law's] meaning and differ as to its application." Connally v. General Constr. Co., 269 U.S. 385, 391 , 46 S.Ct. 126 , 70 L.Ed. 322 (1926). The Government may not render a ban on political speech constitutional by carving out a limited exemption through an amorphous regulatory interpretation. We must reject the approach suggested by the amici. Section 441b covers Hillary. B Citizens United next argues that § 441b may not be applied to Hillary under the approach taken in WRTL. McConnell decided that § 441b(b)(2)'s definition of an "electioneering communication" was facially constitutional insofar as it restricted speech that was "the functional equivalent of express advocacy" for or against a specific candidate. 540 U.S., at 206 , 124 S.Ct. 619 . WRTL then found an unconstitutional application of § 441b where the speech was not "express advocacy or its functional equivalent." 551 U.S., at 481 , 127 S.Ct. 2652 (opinion of ROBERTS, C. J.). As explained by THE CHIEF JUSTICE's controlling opinion in WRTL, the functional-equivalent test is objective: "a court should find that [a communication] is the functional equivalent of express advocacy only if [it] is susceptible of no reasonable interpretation other than as an appeal *890 to vote for or against a specific candidate." Id., at 469-470 , 127 S.Ct. 2652 . Under this test, Hillary is equivalent to express advocacy. The movie, in essence, is a feature-length negative advertisement that urges viewers to vote against Senator Clinton for President. In light of historical footage, interviews with persons critical of her, and voiceover narration, the film would be understood by most viewers as an extended criticism of Senator Clinton's character and her fitness for the office of the Presidency. The narrative may contain more suggestions and arguments than facts, but there is little doubt that the thesis of the film is that she is unfit for the Presidency. The movie concentrates on alleged wrongdoing during the Clinton administration, Senator Clinton's qualifications and fitness for office, and policies the commentators predict she would pursue if elected President. It calls Senator Clinton "Machiavellian," App. 64a, and asks whether she is "the most qualified to hit the ground running if elected President," id., at 88a. The narrator reminds viewers that "Americans have never been keen on dynasties" and that "a vote for Hillary is a vote to continue 20 years of a Bush or a Clinton in the White House," id., at 143a-144a. Citizens United argues that Hillary is just "a documentary film that examines certain historical events." Brief for Appellant 35. We disagree. The movie's consistent emphasis is on the relevance of these events to Senator Clinton's candidacy for President. The narrator begins by asking "could [Senator Clinton] become the first female President in the history of the United States?" App. 35a. And the narrator reiterates the movie's message in his closing line: "Finally, before America decides on our next president, voters should need no reminders of ... what's at stake—the well being and prosperity of our nation." Id., at 144a-145a. As the District Court found, there is no reasonable interpretation of Hillary other than as an appeal to vote against Senator Clinton. Under the standard stated in McConnell and further elaborated in WRTL, the film qualifies as the functional equivalent of express advocacy. C Citizens United further contends that § 441b should be invalidated as applied to movies shown through video-on-demand, arguing that this delivery system has a lower risk of distorting the political process than do television ads. Cf. McConnell, supra, at 207 , 124 S.Ct. 619 . On what we might call conventional television, advertising spots reach viewers who have chosen a channel or a program for reasons unrelated to the advertising. With video-on-demand, by contrast, the viewer selects a program after taking "a series of affirmative steps": subscribing to cable; navigating through various menus; and selecting the program. See Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union, 521 U.S. 844, 867 , 117 S.Ct. 2329 , 138 L.Ed.2d 874 (1997). While some means of communication may be less effective than others at influencing the public in different contexts, any effort by the Judiciary to decide which means of communications are to be preferred for the particular type of message and speaker would raise questions as to the courts' own lawful authority. Substantial questions would arise if courts were to begin saying what means of speech should be preferred or disfavored. And in all events, those differentiations might soon prove to be irrelevant or outdated by technologies that are in rapid flux. See Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. v. FCC, 512 U.S. 622, 639 , 114 S.Ct. 2445 , 129 L.Ed.2d 497 (1994). *891 Courts, too, are bound by the First Amendment. We must decline to draw, and then redraw, constitutional lines based on the particular media or technology used to disseminate political speech from a particular speaker. It must be noted, moreover, that this undertaking would require substantial litigation over an extended time, all to interpret a law that beyond doubt discloses serious First Amendment flaws. The interpretive process itself would create an inevitable, pervasive, and serious risk of chilling protected speech pending the drawing of fine distinctions that, in the end, would themselves be questionable. First Amendment standards, however, "must give the benefit of any doubt to protecting rather than stifling speech." WRTL, 551 U.S., at 469 , 127 S.Ct. 2652 (opinion of ROBERTS, C.J.) (citing New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254, 269-270 , 84 S.Ct. 710 , 11 L.Ed.2d 686 (1964)). D Citizens United also asks us to carve out an exception to § 441b's expenditure ban for nonprofit corporate political speech funded overwhelmingly by individuals. As an alternative to reconsidering Austin , the Government also seems to prefer this approach. This line of analysis, however, would be unavailing. In MCFL, the Court found unconstitutional § 441b's restrictions on corporate expenditures as applied to nonprofit corporations that were formed for the sole purpose of promoting political ideas, did not engage in business activities, and did not accept contributions from for-profit corporations or labor unions. 479 U.S., at 263-264 , 107 S.Ct. 616 ; see also 11 CFR § 114.10 . BCRA's so-called Wellstone Amendment applied § 441b's expenditure ban to all nonprofit corporations. See 2 U.S.C. § 441b(c)(6); McConnell, 540 U.S., at 209 , 124 S.Ct. 619 . McConnell then interpreted the Wellstone Amendment to retain the MCFL exemption to § 441b's expenditure prohibition. 540 U.S., at 211 , 124 S.Ct. 619 . Citizens United does not qualify for the MCFL exemption, however, since some funds used to make the movie were donations from for-profit corporations. The Government suggests we could find BCRA's Wellstone Amendment unconstitutional, sever it from the statute, and hold that Citizens United's speech is exempt from § 441b's ban under BCRA's Snowe-Jeffords Amendment, § 441b(c)(2). See Tr. of Oral Arg. 37-38 (Sept. 9, 2009). The Snowe-Jeffords Amendment operates as a backup provision that only takes effect if the Wellstone Amendment is invalidated. See McConnell, supra, at 339 , 124 S.Ct. 619 (KENNEDY, J., concurring in judgment in part and dissenting in part). The Snowe-Jeffords Amendment would exempt from § 441b's expenditure ban the political speech of certain nonprofit corporations if the speech were funded "exclusively" by individual donors and the funds were maintained in a segregated account. § 441b(c)(2). Citizens United would not qualify for the Snowe-Jeffords exemption, under its terms as written, because Hillary was funded in part with donations from for-profit corporations. Consequently, to hold for Citizens United on this argument, the Court would be required to revise the text of MCFL, sever BCRA's Wellstone Amendment, § 441b(c)(6), and ignore the plain text of BCRA's Snowe-Jeffords Amendment, § 441b(c)(2). If the Court decided to create a de minimis exception to MCFL or the Snowe-Jeffords Amendment, the result would be to allow for-profit corporate general treasury funds to be spent for independent expenditures that support candidates. There is no principled basis *892 for doing this without rewriting Austin 's holding that the Government can restrict corporate independent expenditures for political speech. Though it is true that the Court should construe statutes as necessary to avoid constitutional questions, the series of steps suggested would be difficult to take in view of the language of the statute. In addition to those difficulties the Government's suggestion is troubling for still another reason. The Government does not say that it agrees with the interpretation it wants us to consider. See Supp. Brief for Appellee 3, n. 1 ("Some courts" have implied a de minimis exception, and "appellant would appear to be covered by these decisions"). Presumably it would find textual difficulties in this approach too. The Government, like any party, can make arguments in the alternative; but it ought to say if there is merit to an alternative proposal instead of merely suggesting it. This is especially true in the context of the First Amendment. As the Government stated, this case "would require a remand" to apply a de minimis standard. Tr. of Oral Arg. 39 (Sept. 9, 2009). Applying this standard would thus require case-by-case determinations. But archetypical political speech would be chilled in the meantime. "`First Amendment freedoms need breathing space to survive.' " WRTL, supra, at 468-469, 127 S.Ct. 2652 (opinion of ROBERTS, C.J.) (quoting NAACP v. Button, 371 U.S. 415, 433 , 83 S.Ct. 328 , 9 L.Ed.2d 405 (1963)). We decline to adopt an interpretation that requires intricate case-by-case determinations to verify whether political speech is banned, especially if we are convinced that, in the end, this corporation has a constitutional right to speak on this subject. E As the foregoing analysis confirms, the Court cannot resolve this case on a narrower ground without chilling political speech, speech that is central to the meaning and purpose of the First Amendment. See Morse v. Frederick, 551 U.S. 393, 403 , 127 S.Ct. 2618 , 168 L.Ed.2d 290 (2007). It is not judicial restraint to accept an unsound, narrow argument just so the Court can avoid another argument with broader implications. Indeed, a court would be remiss in performing its duties were it to accept an unsound principle merely to avoid the necessity of making a broader ruling. Here, the lack of a valid basis for an alternative ruling requires full consideration of the continuing effect of the speech suppression upheld in Austin . Citizens United stipulated to dismissing count 5 of its complaint, which raised a facial challenge to § 441b, even though count 3 raised an as-applied challenge. See App. 23a (count 3: "As applied to Hillary, [§ 441b] is unconstitutional under the First Amendment guarantees of free expression and association"). The Government argues that Citizens United waived its challenge to Austin by dismissing count 5. We disagree. First, even if a party could somehow waive a facial challenge while preserving an as-applied challenge, that would not prevent the Court from reconsidering Austin or addressing the facial validity of § 441b in this case. "Our practice `permit[s] review of an issue not pressed [below] so long as it has been passed upon. . . .'" Lebron, 513 U.S., at 379 , 115 S.Ct. 961 (quoting United States v. Williams, 504 U.S. 36, 41 , 112 S.Ct. 1735 , 118 L.Ed.2d 352 (1992); first alteration in original). And here, the District Court addressed Citizens United's facial challenge. See 530 F.Supp.2d, at 278 ("Citizens wants us to enjoin the operation of BCRA § 203 as a facially unconstitutional burden on the First Amendment right to *893 freedom of speech"). In rejecting the claim, it noted that it "would have to overrule McConnell " for Citizens United to prevail on its facial challenge and that "[o]nly the Supreme Court may overrule its decisions." Ibid. (citing Rodriguez de Quijas v. Shearson/American Express, Inc., 490 U.S. 477, 484 , 109 S.Ct. 1917 , 104 L.Ed.2d 526 (1989)). The District Court did not provide much analysis regarding the facial challenge because it could not ignore the controlling Supreme Court decisions in Austin or McConnell . Even so, the District Court did "`pas[s] upon'" the issue. Lebron, supra, at 379 , 115 S.Ct. 961 . Furthermore, the District Court's later opinion, which granted the FEC summary judgment, was "[b]ased on the reasoning of [its] prior opinion," which included the discussion of the facial challenge. App. 261a (citing 530 F.Supp.2d 274 ). After the District Court addressed the facial validity of the statute, Citizens United raised its challenge to Austin in this Court. See Brief for Appellant 30 (" Austin was wrongly decided and should be overruled"); id., at 30-32. In these circumstances, it is necessary to consider Citizens United's challenge to Austin and the facial validity of § 441b's expenditure ban. Second, throughout the litigation, Citizens United has asserted a claim that the FEC has violated its First Amendment right to free speech. All concede that this claim is properly before us. And "`[o]nce a federal claim is properly presented, a party can make any argument in support of that claim; parties are not limited to the precise arguments they made below.'" Lebron, supra, at 379 , 115 S.Ct. 961 (quoting Yee v. Escondido, 503 U.S. 519, 534 , 112 S.Ct. 1522 , 118 L.Ed.2d 153 (1992); alteration in original). Citizens United's argument that Austin should be overruled is "not a new claim." Lebron, 513 U.S., at 379 ,

*318 Justice Kennedy delivered the opinion of the Court. Federal law prohibits corporations and unions from using their general treasury funds to make independent expendi *319 tures for speech defined as an “electioneering communication” or for speech expressly advocating the election or defeat of a candidate. 2 U. S. C. § 441b. Limits on electioneering communications were upheld in McConnell v. Federal Election Comm’n, 540 U. S. 93, 203-209 (2003). The holding of McConnell rested to a large extent on an earlier case, Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, 494 U. S. 652 (1990). Austin had held that political speech may be banned based on the speaker’s corporate identity. In this case we are asked to reconsider Austin and, in effect, McConnell . It has been noted that “Austin was a significant departure from ancient First Amendment principles,” Federal Election Comm’n v. Wisconsin Right to Life, Inc., 551 U. S. 449, 490 (2007) (WRTL) (Scalia, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment). We agree with that conclusion and hold that stare decisis does not compel the continued acceptance of Austin . The Government may regulate corporate political speech through disclaimer and disclosure requirements, but it may not suppress that speech altogether. We turn to the case now before us. I A Citizens United is a nonprofit corporation. It brought this action in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. A three-judge court later convened to hear the cause. The resulting judgment gives rise to this appeal. Citizens United has an annual budget of about $12 million. Most of its funds are from donations by individuals; but, in addition, it accepts a small portion of its funds from for-profit corporations. In January 2008, Citizens United released a film entitled Hillary: The Movie. We refer to the film as Hillary. It is a 90-minute documentary about then-Senator Hillary Clinton, who was a candidate in the Democratic Party’s 2008 Presidential primary elections. Hillary mentions Senator *320 Clinton by name and depicts interviews with political commentators and other persons, most of them quite critical of Senator Clinton. Hillary was released in theaters and on DVD, but Citizens United wanted to increase distribution by making it available through video-on-demand. Video-on-demand allows digital cable subscribers to select programming from various menus, including movies, television shows, sports, news, and music. The viewer can watch the program at any time and can elect to rewind or pause the program. In December 2007, a cable company offered, for a payment of $1.2 million, to make Hillary available on a video-on-demand channel called “Elections ’08.” App. 255a-257a. Some video-on-demand services require viewers to pay a small fee to view a selected program, but here the proposal was to make Hillary available to viewers free of charge. To implement the proposal, Citizens United was prepared to pay for the video-on-demand; and to promote the film, it produced two 10-second ads and one 30-second ad for Hillary. Each ad includes a short (and, in our view, pejorative) statement about Senator Clinton, followed by the name of the movie and the movie’s Web site address. Id., at 26a-27a. Citizens United desired to promote the video-on-demand offering by running advertisements on broadcast and cable television. B Before the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (BCRA), federal law prohibited — and still does prohibit— corporations and unions from using general treasury funds to make direct contributions to candidates or independent expenditures that expressly advocate the election or defeat of a candidate, through any form of media, in connection with certain qualified federal elections. 2 U. S. C. § 441b (2000 ed.); see McConnell, supra, at 204 , and n. 87; Federal Election Comm’n v. Massachusetts Citizens for Life, Inc., 479 U.S. 238, 249 (1986) (MCFL). BCRA §203 amended *321 §441b to prohibit any “electioneering communication” as well. 2 U. S. C. §441b(b)(2) (2006 ed.). An electioneering communication is defined as “any broadcast, cable, or satellite communication” that “refers to a clearly identified candidate for Federal office” and is made within 30 days of a primary or 60 days of a general election. § 434(f)(3)(A). The Federal Election Commission’s (FEC) regulations further define an electioneering communication as a communication that is “publicly distributed.” 11 CFR § 100.29 (a)(2) (2009). “In the case of a candidate for nomination for President... publicly distributed means” that the communication “[c]an be received by 50,000 or more persons in a State where a primary election ... is being held within 30 days.” § 100.29(b)(3)(ii)(A). Corporations and unions are barred from using their general treasury funds for express advocacy or electioneering communications. They may establish, however, a “separate segregated fund” (known as a political action committee, or PAC) for these purposes. 2 U. S. C. § 441b(b)(2). The moneys received by the segregated fund are limited to donations from stockholders and employees of the corporation or, in the case of unions, members of the union. Ibid. C Citizens United wanted to make Hillary available through video-on-demand within 30 days of the 2008 primary elections. It feared, however, that both the film and the ads would be covered by §441b’s ban on corporate-funded independent expenditures, thus subjecting the corporation to civil and criminal penalties under §437g. In December 2007, Citizens United sought declaratory and injunctive relief against the FEC. It argued that (1) §441b is unconstitutional as applied to Hillary; and (2) BCRA’s disclaimer and disclosure requirements, BCRA §§201 and 311, 116 Stat. 88 , 105, are unconstitutional as applied to Hillary and to the three ads for the movie. *322 The District Court denied Citizens United’s motion for a preliminary injunction, 530 F. Supp. 2d 274 (DC 2008) (per curiam), and then granted the FEC’s motion for summary judgment, App. 261a-262a. See id., at 261a (“Based on the reasoning of our prior opinion, we find that the [FEC] is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. See Citizen[s] United v. FEC, 530 F. Supp. 2d 274 (D. D. C. 2008) (denying Citizens United’s request for a preliminary injunction)”). The court held that § 441b was facially constitutional under McConnell , and that §441b was constitutional as applied to Hillary because it was “susceptible of no other interpretation than to inform the electorate that Senator Clinton is unfit for office, that the United States would be a dangerous place in a President Hillary Clinton world, and that viewers should vote against her.” 530 F. Supp. 2d, at 279 . The court also rejected Citizens United’s challenge to BCRA’s disclaimer and disclosure requirements. It noted that “the Supreme Court has written approvingly of disclosure provisions triggered by political speech even though the speech itself was constitutionally protected under the First Amendment.” Id., at 281 . We noted probable jurisdiction. 555 U. S. 1028 (2008). The case was reargued in this Court after the Court asked the parties to file supplemental briefs addressing whether we should overrule either or both Austin and the part of McConnell which addresses the facial validity of 2 U. S. C. § 441b. See 557 U. S. 932 (2009). II Before considering whether Austin should be overruled, we first address whether Citizens United’s claim that § 441b cannot be applied to Hillary may be resolved on other, narrower grounds. A Citizens United contends that § 441b does not cover Hillary, as a matter of statutory interpretation, because the film *323 does not qualify as an “electioneering communication.” §441b(b)(2). Citizens United raises this issue for the first time before us, but we consider the issue because “it was addressed by the court below.” Lebron v. National Railroad Passenger Corporation, 513 U. S. 374, 379 (1995); see 530 F. Supp. 2d, at 277, n. 6 . Under the definition of electioneering communication, the video-on-demand showing of Hillary on cable television would have been a “cable . . . communication” that “referred] to a clearly identified candidate for Federal office” and that was made within 30 days of a primary election. 2 U. S. C. §434 (f)(3)(A)(i). Citizens United, however, argues that Hillary was not “publicly distributed,” because a single video-on-demand transmission is sent only to a requesting cable converter box and each separate transmission, in most instances, will be seen by just one household — not 50,000 or more persons. 11 CFR § 100.29 (a)(2); see § 100.29(b)(3)(ii). This argument ignores the regulation’s instruction on how to determine whether a cable transmission “[c]an be received by 50,000 or more persons.” § 100.29(b)(3)(ii). The regulation provides that the number of people who can receive a cable transmission is determined by the number of cable subscribers in the relevant area. §§ 100.29(b)(7)(i)(G), (ii). Here, Citizens United wanted to use a cable video-on-demand system that had 34.5 million subscribers nationwide. App. 256a. Thus, Hillary could have been received by 50,000 persons or more. One amici brief asks us, alternatively, to construe the condition that the communication “[c]an be received by 50,000 or more persons,” § 100.29(b)(3)(ii)(A), to require “a plausible likelihood that the communication will be viewed by 50,000 or more potential voters” — as opposed to requiring only that the communication is “technologically capable” of being seen by that many people, Brief for Former Officials of the American Civil Liberties Union 5. Whether the population and demographic statistics in a proposed viewing area consisted *324 of 50,000 registered voters — but not “infants, pre-teens, or otherwise electorally ineligible recipients” — would be a required determination, subject to judicial challenge and review, in any case where the issue was in doubt. Id., at 6. In our view the statute cannot be saved by limiting the reach of 2 U. S. C. § 441b through this suggested interpretation. In addition to the costs and burdens of litigation, this result would require a calculation as to the number of people a particular communication is likely to reach, with an inaccurate estimate potentially subjecting the speaker to criminal sanctions. The First Amendment does not permit laws that force speakers to retain a campaign finance attorney, conduct demographic marketing research, or seek declaratory rulings before discussing the most salient political issues of our day. Prolix laws chill speech for the same reason that vague laws chill speech: People “of common intelligence must necessarily guess at [the law’s] meaning and differ as to its application.” Connally v. General Constr. Co., 269 U. S. 385, 391 (1926). The Government may not render a ban on political speech constitutional by carving out a limited exemption through an amorphous regulatory interpretation. We must reject the approach suggested by the amici. Section 441b covers Hillary. B Citizens United next argues that § 441b may not be applied to Hillary under the approach taken in WRTL. McConnell decided that §441b(b)(2)’s definition of an “electioneering communication” was facially constitutional insofar as it restricted speech that was “the functional equivalent of express advocacy” for or against a specific candidate. 540 U. S., at 206 . WRTL then found an unconstitutional application of § 441b where the speech was not “express advocacy or its functional equivalent.” 551 U. S., at 481 (opinion of Roberts, C. J.). As explained by The Chief Justice’s controlling opinion in WRTL, the fimctional-equivalent test is objective: “[A] court should find that [a communication] is *325 the functional equivalent of express advocacy only if [it] is susceptible of no reasonable interpretation other than as an appeal to vote for or against a specific candidate.” Id., at 469-470 . Under this test, Hillary is equivalent to express advocacy. The movie, in essence, is a feature-length negative advertisement that urges viewers to vote against Senator Clinton for President. In light of historical footage, interviews with persons critical of her, and voiceover narration, the film would be understood by most viewers as an extended criticism of Senator Clinton’s character and her fitness for the office of the Presidency. The narrative may contain more suggestions and arguments than facts, but there is little doubt that the thesis of the film is that she is unfit for the Presidency. The movie concentrates on alleged wrongdoing during the Clinton administration, Senator Clinton’s qualifications and fitness for office, and policies the commentators predict she would pursue if elected President. It calls Senator Clinton “Machiavellian,” App. 64a, and asks whether she is “the most qualified to hit the ground running if elected President,” id., at 88a. The narrator reminds viewers that “Americans have never been keen on dynasties” and that “a vote for Hillary is a vote to continue 20 years of a Bush or a Clinton in the White House,” id., at 143a-144a. Citizens United argues that Hillary is just “a documentary film that examines certain historical events.” Brief for Appellant 35. We disagree. The movie’s consistent emphasis is on the relevance of these events to Senator Clinton’s candidacy for President. The narrator begins by asking “could [Senator Clinton] become the first female President in the history of the United States?” App. 35a. And the narrator reiterates the movie’s message in his closing line: “Finally, before America decides on our next president, voters should need no reminders of . . . what’s at stake — the well being and prosperity of our nation.” Id., at 144a-145a. *326 As the District Court found, there is no reasonable inter-. pretation of Hillary other than as an appeal to vote against Senator Clinton. Under the standard stated in McConnell and further elaborated in WRTL, the film qualifies as the functional equivalent of express advocacy. C Citizens United further contends that § 441b should be invalidated as applied to movies shown through video-on-demand, arguing that this delivery system has a lower risk of distorting the political process than do television ads. Cf. McConnell, supra, at 207 . On what we might call conventional television, advertising spots reach viewers who have chosen a channel or a program for reasons unrelated to the advertising. With video-on-demand, by contrast, the viewer selects a program after taking “a series of affirmative steps”: subscribing to cable; navigating through various menus; and selecting the program. See Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union, 521 U. S. 844, 867 (1997). While some means of communication may be less effective than others at influencing the public in different contexts, any effort by the Judiciary to decide which means of communications are to be preferred for the particular type of message and speaker would raise questions as to the courts’ own lawful authority. Substantial questions would arise if courts were to begin saying what means of speech should be preferred or disfavored. And in all events, those differentiations might soon prove to be irrelevant or outdated by technologies that are in rapid flux. See Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. v. FCC, 512 U. S. 622, 639 (1994). Courts, too, are bound by the First Amendment. We must decline to draw, and then redraw, constitutional lines based on the particular media or technology used to disseminate political speech from a particular speaker. It must be noted, moreover, that this undertaking would require substantial litigation over an extended time, all to interpret a *327 law that beyond doubt discloses serious First Amendment flaws. The interpretive process itself would create an inevitable, pervasive, and serious risk of chilling protected speech pending the drawing of fine distinctions that, in the end, would themselves be questionable. First Amendment standards, however, “must give the benefit of any doubt to protecting rather than stifling speech.” WRTL, 551 U. S., at 469 (opinion of Roberts, C. J.) (citing New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U. S. 254, 269-270 (1964)). D Citizens United also asks us to carve out an exception to §441b’s expenditure ban for nonprofit corporate political speech funded overwhelmingly by individuals. As an alternative to reconsidering Austin , the Government also seems to prefer this approach. This line of analysis, however, would be unavailing. In MCFL, the Court found unconstitutional §441b’s restrictions on corporate expenditures as applied to nonprofit corporations that were formed for the sole purpose of promoting political ideas, did not engage in business activities, and did not accept contributions from for-profit corporations or labor unions. 479 U. S., at 263-264 ; see also 11 CFR §114.10 . BCRA’s so-called Wellstone Amendment applied §441b’s expenditure ban to all nonprofit corporations. See 2 U. S. C. §441b(e)(6); McConnell, 540 U. S., at 209 . McConnell then interpreted the Wellstone Amendment to retain the MCFL exemption to §441b’s expenditure prohibition. 540 U. S., at 211 . Citizens United does not qualify for the MCFL exemption, however, since some funds used to make the movie were donations from for-profit corporations. The Government suggests we could find BCRA’s Wellstone Amendment unconstitutional, sever it from the statute, and hold that Citizens United’s speech is exempt from §441b’s ban under BCRA’s Snowe-Jeffords Amendment, §441b(c)(2). See Tr. of Oral Arg. 37-38 (Sept. 9, 2009). The Snowe-Jeffords Amendment operates as a backup provision that *328 only takes effect if the Wellstone Amendment is invalidated. See McConnell, supra, at 339 (Kennedy, J., concurring in judgment in part and dissenting in part). The Snowe-Jeffords Amendment would exempt from § 44 lb’s expenditure ban the political speech of certain nonprofit corporations if the speech were funded “exclusively” by individual donors and the funds were maintained in a segregated account. §441b(c)(2). Citizens United would not qualify for the Snowe-Jeffords exemption, under its terms as written, because Hillary was funded in part with donations from for-profit corporations. Consequently, to hold for Citizens United on this argument, the Court would be required to revise the text of MCFL, sever BCRA’s Wellstone Amendment, §441b(c)(6), and ignore the plain text of BCRA’s Snowe-Jeffords Amendment, §441b(c)(2). If the Court decided to create a de minimis exception to MCFL or the Snowe-Jeffords Amendment, the result would be to allow for-profit corporate general treasury funds to be spent for independent expenditures that support candidates. There is no principled basis for doing this without rewriting Austin’s holding that the Government can restrict corporate independent expenditures for political speech. Though it is true that the Court should construe statutes as necessary to avoid constitutional questions, the series of steps suggested would be difficult to take in view of the language of the statute. In addition to those difficulties the Government’s suggestion is troubling for still another reason. The Government does not say that it agrees with the interpretation it wants us to consider. See Supp. Brief for Appellee 3, n. 1 (“Some courts” have implied a de minimis exception, and “appellant would appear to be covered by these decisions”). Presumably it would find textual difficulties in this approach too. The Government, like any party, can make arguments in the alternative; but it ought to say if there is merit to an alternative proposal instead of *329 merely suggesting it. This is especially true in the context of the First Amendment. As the Government stated, this case “would require a remand” to apply a de minimis standard. Tr. of Oral Arg. 39 (Sept. 9, 2009). Applying this standard would thus require case-by-case determinations. But archetypical political speech would be chilled in the meantime. “'First Amendment freedoms need breathing space to survive.’” WRTL, supra, at 468-469 (opinion of Roberts, C. J.) (quoting NAACP v. Button, 371 U. S. 415, 433 (1963)). We decline to adopt an interpretation that requires intricate case-by-case determinations to verify whether political speech is banned, especially if we are convinced that, in the end, this corporation has a constitutional right to speak on this subject. E As the foregoing analysis confirms, the Court cannot resolve this ease on a narrower ground without chilling political speech, speech that is central to the meaning and purpose of the First Amendment. See Morse v. Frederick, 551 U. S. 393, 403 (2007). It is not judicial restraint to accept an unsound, narrow argument just so the Court can avoid another argument with broader implications. Indeed, a court would be remiss in performing its duties were it to accept an unsound principle merely to avoid the necessity of making a broader ruling. Here, the lack of a valid basis for an alternative ruling requires full consideration of the continuing effect of the speech suppression upheld in Austin . Citizens United stipulated to dismissing count 5 of its complaint, which raised a facial challenge to § 441b, even though count 3 raised an as-applied challenge. See App. 23a (count 3: “As applied to Hillary, [§ 441b] is unconstitutional under the First Amendment guarantees of free expression and association”). The Government argues that Citizens United waived its challenge to Austin by dismissing count 5. We disagree. *330 First, even if a party could somehow waive a facial challenge while preserving an as-applied challenge, that would not prevent the Court from reconsidering Austin or addressing the facial validity of § 441b in this case. “Our practice 'permit[s] review of an issue not pressed [below] so long as it has been passed upon . . . .’” Lebron, 513 U. S., at 379 (quoting United States v. Williams, 504 U. S. 36, 41 (1992); first alteration in original). And here, the District Court addressed Citizens United’s facial challenge. See 530 F. Supp. 2d, at 278 (“Citizens wants us to enjoin the operation of BCEA § 203 as a facially unconstitutional burden on the First Amendment right to freedom of speech”). In rejecting the claim, it noted that it “would have to overrule McConnell” for Citizens United to prevail on its facial challenge and that “[o]nly the Supreme Court may overrule its decisions.” Ibid, (citing Rodriguez de Quijas v. Shearson/American Express, Inc., 490 U. S. 477, 484 (1989)). The District Court did not provide much analysis regarding the facial challenge because it could not ignore the controlling Supreme Court decisions in Austin and McConnell . Even so, the District Court did '"pas[s] upon’” the issue. Lebron, supra, at 379 . Furthermore, the District Court’s later opinion, which granted the FEC summary judgment, was “[b]ased on the reasoning of [its] prior opinion,” which included the discussion of the facial challenge. App. 261a (citing 530 F. Supp. 2d 274 ). After the District Court addressed the facial validity of the statute, Citizens United raised its challenge to Austin in this Court. See Brief for Appellant 30 ('Austin was wrongly decided and should be overruled”); id., at 30-32. In these circumstances, it is necessary to consider Citizens United’s challenge to Austin and the facial validity of § 441b’s expenditure ban. Second, throughout the litigation, Citizens United has asserted a claim that the FEC has violated its First Amendment right to free speech. All concede that this claim is properly before us. And “ '[o]nce a federal claim is properly *331 presented, a party can make any argument in support of that claim; parties are not limited to the precise arguments they made below.’ ” Lebron, supra, at 379 (quoting Yee v. Escondido, 503 U. S. 519, 534 (1992); alteration in original). Citizens United’s argument that Austin should be overruled is "not a new claim.” Lebron, 513 U. S., at 379 . Rather, it is — at most — “a new argument to support what has been [a] consistent claim: that [the FEC] did not accord [Citizens United] the rights it was obliged to provide by the First Amendment.” Ibid. Third, the distinction between facial and as-applied challenges is not so well defined that it has some automatic effect or that it must always control the pleadings and disposition in every case involving a constitutional challenge. The distinction is both instructive and necessary, for it goes to the breadth of the remedy employed by the Court, not what must be pleaded in a complaint. See United States v. Treasury Employees, 513 U. S. 454, 477-478 (1995) (contrasting “a facial challenge” with “a narrower remedy”). The parties cannot enter into a stipulation that prevents the Court from considering certain remedies if those remedies are necessary to resolve a claim that has been preserved. Citizens United has preserved its First Amendment challenge to §441b as applied to the facts of its case; and given all the circumstances, we cannot easily address that issue without assuming a premise — the permissibility of restricting corporate political speech — that is itself in doubt. See Fallon, As-Applied and Facial Challenges and Third-Party Standing, 113 Harv. L. Rev. 1321 , 1339 (2000) (“[0]nce a case is brought, no general categorical line bars a court from making broader pronouncements of invalidity in properly ‘as-applied’ cases”); id., at 1327-1328 . As our request for supplemental briefing implied, Citizens United’s claim implicates the validity of Austin , which in turn implicates the facial validity of §441b. When the statute now at issue came before the Court in McConnell , both the majority and the dissenting opinions *332 considered the question of its facial validity. The holding and validity of Austin were essential to the reasoning of the McConnell majority opinion, which upheld BCRA’s extension of § 441b. See 540 U. S., at 205 (quoting Austin, 494 U. S., at 660 ). McConnell permitted federal felony punishment for speech by all corporations, including nonprofit ones, that speak on prohibited subjects shortly before federal elections. See 540 U. S., at 203-209 . Four Members of the McConnell Court would have overruled Austin , including Chief Justice Rehnquist, who had joined the Court’s opinion in Austin but reconsidered that conclusion. See 540 U. S., at 256-262 (Scalia, J., concurring in part, concurring in judgment in part, and dissenting in part); id., at 273-275 (Thomas, J., concurring in part, concurring in result in part, concurring in judgment in part, and dissenting in part); id., at 322-338 (opinion of Kennedy, J., joined by Rehnquist, C. J., and Scalia, J.). That inquiry into the facial validity of the statute was facilitated by the extensive record, which was “over 100,000 pages” long, made in the three-judge District Court. McConnell v. Federal Election Comm’n, 251 F. Supp. 2d 176, 209 (DC 2003) (per curiam) (McConnell I). It is not the case, then, that the Court today is premature in interpreting § 441b “ ‘on the basis of [a] factually barebones recor[d].’” Washington State Grange v. Washington State Republican Party, 552 U. S. 442, 450 (2008) (quoting Sabri v. United States, 541 U. S. 600, 609 (2004)). The McConnell majority considered whether the statute was facially invalid. An as-applied challenge was brought in Wisconsin Right to Life, Inc. v. Federal Election Comm’n, 546 U. S. 410, 411-412 (2006) (per curiam), and the Court confirmed that the challenge could be maintained. Then, in WRTL, the controlling opinion of the Court not only entertained an as-applied challenge but also sustained it. Three Justices noted that they would continue to maintain the position that the record in McConnell demonstrated the invalidity of the Act on its face. 551 U. S., at 485-504 (opinion of *333 Scaua, J.). The controlling opinion in WRTL, which refrained from holding the statute invalid except as applied to the facts then before the Court, was a careful attempt to accept the-essential elements of the Court’s opinion in McConnell, while vindicating the First Amendment arguments made by the WRTL parties. 551 U. S., at 482 (opinion of Koberts, C. J.). As noted above, Citizens United’s narrower arguments are not sustainable under a fair reading of the statute. In the exercise of its judicial responsibility, it is necessary then for the Court to consider the facial validity of § 441b. Any other course of decision would prolong the substantial, nationwide chilling effect caused by §441b’s prohibitions on corporate expenditures. Consideration of the facial validity of § 441b is further supported by the following reasons. First is the uncertainty caused by the litigating position of the Government. As discussed above, see Part II-D, supra, the Government suggests, as an alternative argument, that an as-applied challenge might have merit. This argument proceeds on the premise that the nonprofit corporation involved here may have received only de minimis donations from for-profit corporations and that some nonprofit corporations may be exempted from the operation of the statute. The Government also suggests that an as-applied challenge to §441b’s ban on books may be successful, although it would defend §441b’s ban as applied to almost every other form of media including pamphlets. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 65-66 (Sept. 9, 2009). The Government thus, by its own position, contributes to the uncertainty that §441b causes. When the Government holds out the possibility of ruling for Citizens United on a narrow ground yet refrains from adopting that position, the added uncertainty demonstrates the necessity to address the question of statutory validity. Second, substantial time would be required to bring clarity to the application of the statutory provision on these points

Chief Justice Roberts, with whom Justice Alito joins, concurring. The Government urges us in this case to uphold a direct prohibition on political speech. It asks us to embrace a theory of the First Amendment that would allow censorship not only of television and radio broadcasts, but of pamphlets, *373 posters, the Internet, and virtually any other medium that corporations and unions might find useful in expressing their views on matters of public concern. Its theory, if accepted, would empower the Government to prohibit newspapers from running editorials or opinion pieces supporting or opposing candidates for office, so long as the newspapers were owned by corporations — as the major ones are. First Amendment rights could be confined to individuals, subverting the vibrant public discourse that is at the foundation of our democracy. The Court properly rejects that theory, and I join its opinion in full. The First Amendment protects more than just the individual on a soapbox and the lonely pamphleteer. I write separately to address the important principles of judicial restraint and stare decisis implicated in this case. I Judging the constitutionality of an Act of Congress is “the gravest and most delicate duty that this Court is called on to perform.” Blodgett v. Holden, 275 U. S. 142, 147-148 (1927) (Holmes, J., concurring). Because the stakes are so high, our standard practice is to refrain from addressing constitutional questions except when necessary to rule on particular claims before us. See Ashwander v. TVA, 297 U. S. 288, 346-348 (1936) (Brandeis, J., concurring). This policy underlies both our willingness to construe ambiguous statutes to avoid constitutional problems and our practice “ ‘never to formulate a rule of constitutional law broader than is required by the precise facts to which it is to be applied.’” United States v. Raines, 362 U. S. 17, 21 (1960) (quoting Liverpool, New York & Philadelphia S. S. Co. v. Commissioners of Emigration, 113 U. S. 33, 39 (1885)). The majority and dissent are united in expressing allegiance to these principles. Ante, at 329; post, at 405-406 (Stevens, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). *374 But I cannot agree with my dissenting colleagues on how these principles apply in this case. The majority’s step-by-step analysis accords with our standard practice of avoiding broad constitutional questions except when necessary to decide the case before us. The majority begins by addressing — and quite properly rejecting — Citizens United’s statutory claim that 2 U. S. C. § 441b does not actually cover its production and distribution of Hillary: The Movie (hereinafter Hillary). If there were a valid basis for deciding this statutory claim in Citizens United’s favor (and thereby avoiding constitutional adjudication), it would be proper to do so. Indeed, that is precisely the approach the Court took just last Term in Northwest Austin Municipal Util. Dist. No. One v. Holder, 557 U. S. 193 (2009), when eight Members of the Court agreed to decide the case on statutory grounds instead of reaching the appellant’s broader argument that the Voting Rights Act is unconstitutional. It is only because the majority rejects Citizens United’s statutory claim that it proceeds to consider the group’s various constitutional arguments, beginning with its narrowest claim (that Hillary is not the functional equivalent of express advocacy) and proceeding to its broadest claim (that Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, 494 U. S. 652 (1990), should be overruled). This is the same order of operations followed by the controlling opinion in Federal Election Comm’n v. Wisconsin Right to Life, Inc., 551 U. S. 449 (2007) (WRTL). There the appellant was able to prevail on its narrowest constitutional argument because its broadcast ads did not qualify as the functional equivalent of express advocacy; there was thus no need to go on to address the broader claim that McConnell v. Federal Election Comm’n, 540 U. S. 93 (2003), should be overruled. WRTL, 551 U. S., at 482 ; id., at 482-483 (Alito, J., concurring). This case is different — not, as the dissent suggests, because the approach taken in WRTL has been deemed a “failure,” post, at 402, *375 but because, in the absence of any valid narrower ground of decision, there is no way to avoid Citizens United’s broader constitutional argument. The dissent advocates an approach to addressing Citizens United’s claims that I find quite perplexing. It presumably agrees with the majority that Citizens United’s narrower statutory and constitutional arguments lack merit — otherwise its conclusion that the group should lose this case would make no sense. Despite agreeing that these narrower arguments fail, however, the dissent argues that the majority should nonetheless latch on to one of them in order to avoid reaching the broader constitutional question of whether Austin remains good law. It even suggests that the Court’s failure to adopt one of these concededly meritless arguments is a sign that the majority is not “serious about judicial restraint.” Post, at 408. This approach is based on a false premise: that our practice of avoiding .unnecessary (and unnecessarily broad) constitutional holdings somehow trumps our obligation faithfully to interpret the law. It should go without saying, however, that we cannot embrace a narrow ground of decision simply because it is narrow; it must also be right. Thus while it is true that “[i]f it is not necessary to decide more, it is necessary not to decide more,” post, at 405 (internal quotation marks omitted), sometimes it is necessary to decide more. There is a difference between judicial restraint and judicial abdication. When constitutional questions are “indispensably necessary” to resolving the case at hand, “the court must meet and decide them.” Ex parte Randolph, 20 F. Cas. 242, 254 (No. 11,558) (CC Va. 1883) (Marshall, C. J.). Because it is necessary to reach Citizens United’s broader argument that Austin should be overruled, the debate over whether to consider this claim on an as-applied or facial basis strikes me as largely beside the point. Citizens United has standing — it is being injured by the Government’s enforcement of the Act. Citizens United has a constitutional *376 claim — the Act violates the First Amendment, because it prohibits political speech. The Government has a defense— the Act may be enforced, consistent with the First Amendment, against corporations. Whether the claim or the defense prevails is the question before us. Given the nature of that claim and defense, it makes no difference of any substance whether this case is resolved by invalidating the statute on its face or only as applied to Citizens United. Even if considered in as-applied terms, a holding in this ease that the Act may not be applied to Citizens United — because corporations as well as individuals enjoy the pertinent First Amendment rights — would mean that any other corporation raising the same challenge would also win. Likewise, a conclusion that the Act may be applied to Citizens United — because it is constitutional to prohibit corporate political speech — would similarly govern future cases. Regardless whether we label Citizens United’s claim a “facial” or “as-applied” challenge, the consequences of the Court’s decision are the same. 1 II The text and purpose of the First Amendment point in the same direction: Congress may not prohibit political speech, even if the speaker is a corporation or union. What makes this case difficult is the need to confront our prior decision in Austin . This is the first case in which we have been asked to overrule Austin , and thus it is also the first in which we have had reason to consider how much weight to give stare decisis in assessing its continued validity. The dissent erroneously *377 declares that the Court “reaffirmed” Austin’s holding in subsequent cases — namely, Federal Election Comm’n v. Beaumont, 539 U. S. 146 (2003); McConnell; and WRTL. Post, at 439-441. Not so. Not a single party in any of those cases asked us to overrule Austin , and as the dissent points out, post, at 396-398, the Court generally does not consider constitutional arguments that have not properly been raised. Austin’s validity was therefore not directly at issue in the cases the dissent cites. The Court's unwillingness to overturn Austin in those eases cannot be understood as a reaffirmation of that decision. A Fidelity to precedent — the policy of stare decisis — is vital to the proper exercise of the judicial function. “Stare decisis is the preferred course because it promotes the evenhanded, predictable, and consistent development of legal principles, fosters reliance on judicial decisions, and contributes to the actual and perceived integrity of the judicial process.” Payne v. Tennessee, 501 U. S. 808, 827 (1991). For these reasons, we have long recognized that departures from precedent are inappropriate in the absence of a “special justification.” Arizona v. Rumsey, 467 U. S. 203, 212 (1984). At the same time, stare decisis is neither an “inexorable command,” Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U. S. 558, 577 (2003), nor “a mechanical formula of adherence to the latest decision,” Helvering v. Hallock, 309 U. S. 106, 119 (1940), especially in constitutional cases, see United States v. Scott, 437 U. S. 82, 101 (1978). If it were, segregation would be legal, minimum wage laws would be unconstitutional, and the Government could wiretap ordinary criminal suspects without first obtaining warrants. See Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U. S. 537 (1896), overruled by Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U. S. 483 (1954); Adkins v. Children’s Hospital of D. C., 261 U. S. 525 (1923), overruled by West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish, 300 U. S. 379 (1937); Olmstead v. United States, 277 U. S. 438 (1928), overruled by Katz v. United States, *378 389 U. S. 347 (1967). As the dissent properly notes, none of us has viewed stare decisis in such absolute terms. Post, at 408; see also, e. g., Randall v. Sorrell, 548 U. S. 230, 274-281 (2006) (Stevens, J., dissenting) (urging the Court to overrule its invalidation of limits on independent expenditures on political speech in Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U. S. 1 (1976) (per curiam)). Stare decisis is instead a “principle of policy.” Helvering, supra, at 119 . When considering whether to reexamine a prior erroneous holding, we must balance the importance of having constitutional questions decided against the importance of having them decided right. As Justice Jackson explained, this requires a “sober appraisal of the disadvantages of the innovation as well as those of the questioned case, a weighing of practical effects of one against the other.” Jackson, Decisional Law and Stare Decisis, 30 A. B. A. J. 334 (1944). In conducting this balancing, we must keep in mind that stare decisis is not an end in itself. It is instead “the means by which we ensure that the law will not merely change erratically, but will develop in a principled and intelligible fashion.” Vasquez v. Hillery, 474 U. S. 254, 265 (1986). Its greatest purpose is to serve a constitutional ideal — the rule of law. It follows that in the unusual circumstance when fidelity to any particular precedent does more to damage this constitutional ideal than to advance it, we must be more willing to depart from that precedent. Thus, for example, if the precedent under consideration itself departed from the Court’s jurisprudence, returning to the “‘intrinsically sounder’ doctrine established in prior cases” may “better serv[e] the values of stare decisis than would following [the] more recently decided case inconsistent with the decisions that came before it.” Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Peña, 515 U. S. 200, 231 (1995); see also Helvering, supra, at 119 ; Randall, supra, at 274 (Stevens, J., dissenting). Abrogating the errant precedent, rather than *379 reaffirming or extending it, might better preserve the law’s coherence and curtail the precedent’s disruptive effects. Likewise, if adherence to a precedent actually impedes the stable and orderly adjudication of future cases, its stare decisis effect is also diminished. This can happen in a number of circumstances, such as when the precedent’s validity is so hotly contested that it cannot reliably function as a basis for decision in future cases, when its rationale threatens to upend our settled jurisprudence in related areas of law, and when the precedent’s underlying 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. 223, 235 (2009); Montejo v. Louisiana, 556 U. S. 778, 792 (2009) (stare decisis does not control when adherence to the prior decision requires “fundamentally revising its theoretical basis”). B 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 355; 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 aggrega *380 tions 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 rejection of the idea that “speech that otherwise would be within the protection of the First Amendment loses that protection simply because its source is a corporation.” 435 U. S., at 784 . The dissent correctly points out that Bellotii involved a referendum rather than a candidate election, and that Bellota itself noted this factual distinction, id., at 788, n. 26 ; post, at 442-443. But this distinction does not explain why corporations may be subject to prohibitions on speech in candidate elections when individuals may not. Second, the validity of Austin’s rationale — itself adopted over two “spirited dissents,” Payne, 501 U. S., at 829 — has proved to be the consistent subject of dispute among Members of this Court ever since. See, e. g., WRTL, 551 U. S., at 483 (Scalia, J., joined by Kennedy and Thomas, JJ., concurring in part and concurring in judgment); McConnell, 540 U. S., at 247, 264, 286 (opinions of Scalia, Thomas, and Kennedy, JJ.); Beaumont, 539 U. S., at 163, 164 (opinions of Kennedy and Thomas, JJ.). The simple fact that one of our decisions remains controversial is, of course, insufficient to justify overruling it. But it does undermine the precedent’s ability to contribute to the stable and orderly development of the law. In such circumstances, it is entirely appropriate for the Court — which in this case is squarely asked to reconsider Austin’s validity for the first time — to address the matter with a greater willingness to consider new approaches capable of restoring our doctrine to sounder footing. Third, the Austin decision is uniquely destabilizing because it threatens to subvert our Court’s decisions even outside the particular context of corporate express advocacy. *381 The First Amendment theory underlying Austin’s holding is extraordinarily broad. Austin’s logic would authorize government prohibition of political speech by a category of speakers in the name of equality — a point that most scholars acknowledge (and many celebrate), but that the dissent denies. Compare, e. g., Garrett, New Voices in Polities: Justice Marshall’s Jurisprudence on Law and Politics, 52 How. L. J. 655, 669 (2009) (Austin “has been understood by most commentators to be an opinion driven by equality considerations, albeit disguised in the language of ‘political corruption’ ”), with post, at 464 (Austin’s rationale “is manifestly not just an ‘equalizing’ ideal in disguise”). 2 It should not be surprising, then, that Members of the Court have relied on Austin’s expansive logic to justify greater incursions on the First Amendment, even outside the original context of corporate advocacy on behalf of candidates running for office. See, e. g., Davis v. Federal Election Comm’n, 554 U. S. 724, 756 (2008) (Stevens, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) (relying on Austin and other cases to justify restrictions on campaign spending by individual candidates, explaining that “there is no reason that their logic — specifically, their concerns about the corrosive and distorting effects of wealth on our political process — is not equally applicable in the context of individual wealth”); McConnell, supra, at 203-209 (extending Austin beyond its original context to cover not only the “functional equivalent” of express advocacy by corporations, but also *382 electioneering speech conducted by labor unions). The dissent in this case succumbs to the same temptation, suggesting that Austin justifies prohibiting corporate speech because such speech might unduly influence “the market for legislation.” Post, at 471. The dissent reads Austin to permit restrictions on corporate speech based on nothing more than the fact that the corporate form may help individuals coordinate and present their views more effectively. Post, at 471-472. A speaker’s ability to persuade, however, provides no basis for government regulation of free and open public debate on what the laws should be. If taken seriously, Austin’s logic would apply most directly to newspapers and other media corporations. They have a more profound impact on public discourse than most other speakers. These corporate entities are, for the time being, not subject to §441b’s otherwise generally applicable prohibitions on corporate political speech. But this is simply a matter of legislative grace. The fact that the law currently grants a favored position to media corporations is no reason to overlook the danger inherent in accepting a theory that would allow government restrictions on their political speech. See generally McConnell, supra, at 283-286 (Thomas, J., concurring in part, concurring in judgment in part, and dissenting in part). These readings of Austin do no more than carry that decision’s reasoning to its logical endpoint. In doing so, they highlight the threat Austin poses to First Amendment rights generally, even outside its specific factual context of corporate express advocacy. Because Austin is so difficult to confine to its facts — and because its logic threatens to undermine our First Amendment jurisprudence and the nature of public discourse more broadly — the costs of giving it stare decisis effect are unusually high. Finally and most importantly, the Government’s own effort to defend Austin — or, more accurately, to defend something that is not quite Austin — underscores its weakness as *383 a precedent of the Court. The Government concedes that Austin “is not the most lucid opinion,” yet asks us to reaffirm its holding. Tr. of Oral Arg. 62 (Sept. 9, 2009). But while invoking stare decisis to support this position, the Government never once even mentions the compelling interest that Austin relied upon in the first place: the need to diminish “the corrosive and distorting effects of immense aggregations of wealth that are accumulated with the help of the corporate form and that have little or no correlation to the public’s support for the corporation’s political ideas.” 494 U. S., at 660 . Instead of endorsing Austin on its own terms, the Government urges us to reaffirm Austin’s specific holding on the basis of two new and potentially expansive interests — the need to prevent actual or apparent quid pro quo corruption, and the need to protect corporate shareholders. See Supp. Brief for Appellee 8-10, 12-13. Those interests may or may not support the result in Austin , but they were plainly not part of the reasoning on which Austin relied. To its credit, the Government forthrightly concedes that Austin did not embrace either of the new rationales it now urges upon us. See, e. g., Supp. Brief for Appellee 11 (“The Court did not decide in Austin .. . whether the compelling interest in preventing actual or apparent corruption provides a constitutionally sufficient justification for prohibiting the use of corporate treasury funds for independent electioneering”); Tr. of Oral Arg. 45 (Sept. 9, 2009) (“Austin did not articulate what we believe to be the strongest compelling interest”); id., at 61 (“[The Court:] I take it we have never accepted your shareholder protection interest. This is a new argument. [The Government:] I think that that’s fair”); id., at 64 (“[The Court:] In other words, you are asking us to uphold Austin on the basis of two arguments, two principles, two compelling interests we have never accepted, in [the context of limits on political expenditures]. [The Government:] [I]n this particular context, fair enough”). *384 To be clear: The Court in Austin nowhere relied upon the only arguments the Government now raises to support that decision. In fact, the only opinion in Austin endorsing the Government’s argument based on the threat of quid pro quo corruption was Justice Stevens’s concurrence. 494 U. S., at 678 . The Court itself did not do so, despite the fact that the concurrence highlighted the argument. Moreover, the Court’s only discussion of shareholder protection in Austin appeared in a section of the opinion that sought merely to distinguish Austin’s facts from those of Federal Election Comm’n v. Massachusetts Citizens for Life, Inc., 479 U. S. 238 (1986). Austin, supra, at 663. Nowhere did Austin suggest that the goal of protecting shareholders is itself a compelling interest authorizing restrictions on First Amendment rights. To the extent that the Government’s case for reaffirming Austin depends on radically reconceptualizing its reasoning, that argument is at odds with itself. Stare decisis is a doctrine of preservation, not transformation. It counsels deference to past mistakes, but provides no justification for making new ones. There is therefore no basis for the Court to give precedential sway to reasoning that it has never accepted, simply because that reasoning happens to support a conclusion reached on different grounds that have since been abandoned or discredited. Doing so would undermine the rule-of-law values that justify stare decisis in the first place. It would effectively license the Court to invent and adopt new principles of constitutional law solely for the purpose of rationalizing its past errors, without a proper analysis of whether those principles have merit on their own. This approach would allow the Court’s past missteps to spawn future mistakes, undercutting the very rule-of-law values that stare decisis is designed to protect. None of this is to say that the Government is barred from making new arguments to support the outcome in Austin . *385 On the contrary, it is free to do so. And of course the Court is free to accept them. But the Government’s new arguments must stand or fall on their own; they are not entitled to receive the special deference we accord to precedent. They are, as grounds to support Austin , literally imprecedented. Moreover, to the extent the Government relies on new arguments — and declines to defend Austin on its own terms — we may reasonably infer that it lacks confidence in that decision’s original justification. Because continued adherence to Austin threatens to subvert the “principled and intelligible” development of our First Amendment jurisprudence, Vasquez, 474 U. S., at 265 , I support the Court’s determination to overrule that decision. * * * We have had two rounds of briefing in this case, two oral arguments, and 54 amicus briefs to help us carry out our obligation to decide the necessary constitutional questions according to law. We have also had the benefit of a comprehensive dissent that has helped ensure that the Court has considered all the relevant issues. This careful consideration convinces me that Congress violates the First Amendment when it decrees that some speakers may not engage in political speech at election time, when it matters most. The dissent suggests that I am “much too quick” to reach this conclusion because I “ignore” Citizens United’s narrower arguments. Post, at 405, n. 12. But in fact I do not ignore those arguments; on the contrary, I (and my colleagues in the majority) appropriately consider and reject them on their merits, before addressing Citizens United’s broader claims. Supra, at 373-375; ante, at 322-329. See also, e. g., R. Hasen, The Supreme Court and Election Law: Judging Equality from Baker v. Carr to Bush v. Gore 114 (2003) (“Austin represents the first and only case [before McConnell] in which a majority of the Court accepted, in deed if not in word, the equality rationale as a permissible state interest”); Strauss, Corruption, Equality, and Campaign Finance Reform, 94 Colum. L. Rev. 1369 , and n. 1 (1994) (noting that Austin’s rationale was based on equalizing political speech); Ashdown, Controlling Campaign Spending and the “New Corruption”: Waiting for the Court, 44 Vand. L. Rev. 767 , 781 (1991); Eule, Promoting Speaker Diversity: Austin and Metro Broadcasting, 1990 S. Ct. Rev. 105, 108-111.

Justice Scalia, with whom Justice Alito joins, and with whom Justice Thomas joins in part, concurring. I join the opinion of the Cotut. 1 I write separately to address Justice Stevens' discussion of “Original Understandings,” post, at 425 (opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part) (hereinafter referred to as the dissent). This section of the dissent purports to show that today’s decision is not supported by the original understanding of the First Amendment. The dissent at *386 tempts this demonstration, however, in splendid isolation from the text of the First Amendment. It never shows why “the freedom of speech” that was the right of Englishmen did not include the freedom to speak in association with other individuals, including association in the corporate form. To be sure, in 1791 (as now) corporations could pursue only the objectives set forth in their charters; but the dissent provides no evidence that their speech in the pursuit of those objectives could be censored. Instead of taking this straightforward approach to determining the Amendment’s meaning, the dissent embarks on a detailed exploration of the Framers’ views about the “role of corporations in society.” Post, at 426. The Framers did not like corporations, the dissent concludes, and therefore it follows (as night the day) that corporations had no rights of free speech. Of course the Framers’ personal affection or disaffection for corporations is relevant only insofar as it can be thought to be reflected in the understood meaning of the text they enacted — not, as the dissent suggests, as a freestanding substitute for that text. But the dissent’s distortion of proper analysis is even worse than that. Though faced with a constitutional text that makes no distinction between types of speakers, the dissent feels no necessity to provide even an isolated statement from the founding era to the effect that corporations are not covered, but places the burden on appellant to bring forward statements showing that they are. Ibid. (“[T]here is not a scintilla of evidence to support the notion that anyone believed [the First Amendment] would preclude regulatory distinctions based on the corporate form”). Despite the corporation-hating quotations the dissent has dredged up, it is far from clear that by the end of the 18th century corporations were despised. If so, how came there to be so many of them? The dissent’s statement that there were few business corporations during the 18th century— “only a few hundred during all of the 18th century” — is mis *387 leading. Post, at 426, n. 53. There were approximately 335 charters issued to business corporations in the United States by the end of the 18th century. 2 See 2 J. Davis, Essays in the Earlier History of American Corporations 24 (1917) (reprinted 2006) (hereinafter Davis). This was a “considerable extension of corporate enterprise in the field of business,” id., at 8, and represented “unprecedented growth,” id., at 309. Moreover, what seems like a small number by today’s standards surely does not indicate the relative importance of corporations when the Nation was considerably smaller. As I have previously noted, “[b]y the end of the eighteenth century the corporation was a familiar figure in American economic life.” McConnell v. Federal Election Comm’n, 540 U. S. 93, 256 (2003) (Scalia, J., concurring in part, concurring in judgment in part, and dissenting in part) (quoting C. Cooke, Corporation Trust and Company 92 (1951) (hereinafter Cooke); internal quotation marks omitted). Even if we thought it proper to apply the dissent’s approach of excluding from First Amendment coverage what the Founders disliked, and even if we agreed that the Founders disliked founding-era corporations, modern corporations might not qualify for exclusion. Most of the Founders’ resentment toward corporations was directed at the state-granted monopoly privileges that individually chartered corporations enjoyed. 3 Modern corporations do not have such *388 privileges, and would probably have been favored by most of our enterprising Founders — excluding, perhaps, Thomas Jefferson and others favoring perpetuation of an agrarian society. Moreover, if the Founders’ specific intent with re- speet to corporations is what matters, why does the dissent ignore the Founders’ views about other legal entities that have more in common with modern business corporations than the founding-era corporations? At the time of the founding, religious, educational, and literary corporations were incorporated under general incorporation statutes, much as business corporations are today. 4 See Davis 16-17; R. Seavoy, Origins of the American Business Corporation, 1784-1855, p. 5 (1982); Cooke 94 . There were also small unincorporated business associations, which some have argued were the “‘true progenitors’” of today’s business corporations. Friedman 200 (quoting S. Livermore, Early American Land Companies: Their Influence on Corporate Development 216 (1939)); see also Davis 33. Were all of these silently excluded from the protections of the First Amendment? The lack of a textual exception for speech by corporations cannot be explained on the ground that such organizations did not exist or did not speak. To the contrary, colleges, towns and cities, religious institutions, and guilds had long been organized as corporations at common law and under the King’s charter, see 1 W. Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England 455-473 (1765); 1 S. Kyd, A Treatise on the Law of Corporations 1-32, 63 (1793) (reprinted 2006), and as *389 I have discussed, the practice of incorporation only expanded in the United States. Both corporations and voluntary associations actively petitioned the Government and expressed their views in newspapers and pamphlets. For example: An antislavery Quaker corporation petitioned the First Congress, distributed pamphlets, and communicated through the press in 1790. W. diGiacomantonio, “For the Gratification of a Volunteering Society”: Antislavery and Pressure Group Politics in the First Federal Congress, 15 J. Early Republic 169 (1995). The New York Sons of Liberty sent a circular to Colonies farther south in 1766. P. Maier, From Resistance to Revolution 79-80 (1972). And the Society for the Relief and Instruction of Poor Germans circulated a biweekly paper from 1755 to 1757. Adams, The Colonial German-language Press and the American Revolution, in The Press & the American Revolution 151, 161-162 (B. Bailyn & J. Hench eds. 1980). The dissent offers no evidence— none whatever — that the First Amendment’s unqualified text was originally understood to exclude such associational speech from its protection. 5 *390 Historical evidence relating to the textually similar clause “the freedom of. . . the press” also provides no support for the proposition that the First Amendment excludes conduct of artificial legal entities from the scope of its protection. The freedom of “the press” was widely understood to protect the publishing activities of individual editors and printers. See McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Comm’n, 514 U. S. 334, 360 (1995) (Thomas, J., concurring in judgment); see also McConnell, 540 U. S., at 252-253 (opinion of Scalia, J.). But these individuals often acted through newspapers, which (much like corporations) had their own names, outlived the individuals who had founded them, could be bought and sold, were sometimes owned by more than one person, and were operated for profit. See generally F. Mott, American Journalism: A History of Newspapers in the United States Through 250 Years 3-164 (1941); J. Smith, Freedom’s Fetters (1956). Their activities were not stripped of First Amendment protection simply because they were carried out under the banner of an artificial legal entity. And the notion which follows from the dissent’s view, that modern newspapers, since they are incorporated, have free-speech rights only at the sufferance of Congress, boggles the mind. 6 *391 In passing, the dissent also claims that the Court’s conception of corruption is unhistorical. The Framers “would have been appalled,” it says, by the evidence of corruption in the congressional findings supporting the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002. Post, at 451-452. For this proposition, the dissent cites a law-review article arguing that “corruption” was originally understood to include “moral decay” and even actions taken by citizens in pursuit of private rather than public ends. Teachout, The Anti-Corruption Principle, 94 Cornell L. Rev. 341 , 373, 378 (2009). It is hard to see how this has anything to do with what sort of corruption can be combated by restrictions on political speech. Moreover, if speech can be prohibited because, in the view of the Government, it leads to “moral decay” or does not serve “public ends,” then there is no limit to the Government’s censorship power. The dissent says that when the Framers “constitutionalized the right to free speech in the First Amendment, it was the free speech of individual Americans that they had in mind.” Post, at 428. That is no doubt true. All the provisions of the Bill of Rights set forth the rights of individual *392 men and women — not, for example, of trees or polar bears. But the individual person’s right to speak includes the right to speak in association with other individual persons. Surely the dissent does not believe that speech by the Republican Party or the Democratic Party can be censored because it is not the speech of “an individual American.” It is the speech of many individual Americans, who have associated in a common cause, giving the leadership of the party the right to speak on their behalf. The association of individuals in a business corporation is no different — or at least it cannot be denied the right to speak on the simplistic ground that it is not “an individual American.” 7 But to return to, and summarize, my principal point, which is the conformity of today’s opinion with the original meaning of the First Amendment. The Amendment is written in terms of “speech,” not speakers. Its text offers no foothold *393 for excluding any category of speaker, from single individuals to partnerships of individuals, to unincorporated associations of individuals, to incorporated associations of individuals — and the dissent offers no evidence about the original meaning of the text to support any such exclusion. We are therefore simply left with the question whether the speech at issue in this case is “speech” covered by the First Amendment. No one says otherwise. A documentary film critical of a potential Presidential candidate is core political speech, and its nature as such does not change simply because it was funded by a corporation. Nor does the character of that funding produce any reduction whatever in the “inherent worth of the speech” and “its capacity for informing the public,” First Nat. Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, 435 U. S. 765, 777 (1978). Indeed, to exclude or impede corporate speech is to muzzle the principal agents of the modern free economy. We should celebrate rather than condemn the addition of this speech to the public debate. Justice Thomas does not join Part IV of the Court’s opinion. The dissent protests that 1791 rather than 1800 should be the relevant date, and that “[m]ore than half of the century’s total business charters were issued between 1796 and 1800.” Post, at 426, n. 53. I used 1800 only because the dissent did. But in any case, it is surely fanciful to think that a consensus of hostility toward corporations was transformed into general favor at some magical moment between 1791 and 1796. “[P]eople in 1800 identified corporations with franchised monopolies.” L. Friedman, A History of American Law 194 (2d ed. 1985) (hereinafter Friedman). “The chief cause for the changed popular attitude towards business corporations that marked the opening of the nineteenth century was the elimination of their inherent monopolistic character. This was accomplished primarily by an extension of the principle of free incorpora *388 tion under general laws.” 1 W. Fletcher, Cyclopedia of the Law of Corporations §2, p. 8 (rev. ed. 2006). At times (though not always) the dissent seems to exclude such non-business corporations” from its denial of free-speech rights. See post, at 428. Finding in a seemingly categorical text a distinction between the rights of business corporations and the rights of nonbusiness corporations is even more imaginative than finding a distinction between the rights of all corporations and the rights of other associations. The best the dissent can come up with is that “[p]ostratifieation practice” supports its reading of the First Amendment. Post, at 431, n. 56. For this proposition, the dissent cites Justice White’s statement (in dissent) that “[t]he common law was generally interpreted as prohibiting corporate political participation,” First Nat. Bank of Boston v. Bellotti, 435 U. S. 765, 819 (1978). The sole authority Justice White cited for this proposition, id., at 819, n. 14 , was a law-review note that made no such claim. To the contrary, it stated that the eases dealing with the propriety of corporate political expenditures were “few.” Note, Corporate Political Affairs Programs, 70 Yale L. X 821, 852 (1961). More specifically, the note cites only two holdings to that effect, one by a Federal District Court, and one by the Supreme Court of Montana. Ibid., n. 197. Of course even if the common law was “generally interpreted” to prohibit corporate political expenditures as ultra vires, that would have nothing to do with whether political expenditures that were authorized by a corporation’s charter could constitutionally be suppressed. As additional “[p]ostratification practice,” the dissent notes that the Court “did not recognize any First Amendment protections for corpora *390 tions until the middle part of the 20th century.” Post, at 431, n. 56. But it did that in Grosjean v. American Press Co., 297 U. S. 233 (1936), a case involving freedom of the press — which the dissent acknowledges did cover corporations from the outset. The relative recency of that first case is unsurprising. All of our First Amendment jurisprudence was slow to develop. We did not consider application of the First Amendment to speech restrictions other than prior restraints until 1919, see Schenck v. United States, 249 U. S. 47 ; we did not invalidate a state law on First Amendment grounds until 1931, see Stromberg v. California, 283 U. S. 359 , and a federal law until 1965, see Lamont v. Postmaster General, 381 U. S. 301 . The dissent seeks to avoid this conclusion (and to turn a liability into an asset) by interpreting the Freedom of the Press Clause to refer to the institutional press (thus demonstrating, according to the dissent, that the Founders “did draw distinctions — explicit distinctions — between types of ‘speakers,’ or speech outlets or forms”). Post, at 431, and n. 57. It is passing strange to interpret the phrase “the freedom of speech, or of the *391 press” to mean, not everyone’s right to speak or publish, but rather everyone’s right to speak or the institutional press’s right to publish. No one thought that is what it meant. Patriot Noah Webster’s 1828 dictionary contains, under the word “press,” the following entry: “Liberty of the press, in civil policy, is the free right of publishing books, pamphlets or papers without previous restraint; or the unrestrained right which every citizen enjoys of publishing his thoughts and opinions, subject only to punishment for publishing what is pernicious to morals or to the peace of the state.” 2 American Dictionary of the English Language (1828) (reprinted 1970). As the Court’s opinion describes, ante, at 352, our jurisprudence agrees with Noah Webster and contradicts the dissent. “The liberty of the press is not confined to newspapers and periodicals. It necessarily embraces pamphlets and leaflets.... The press in its historical connotation comprehends every sort of publication which affords a vehicle of information and opinion.” Lovell v. City of Griffin, 303 U. S. 444, 452 (1938). The dissent says that “‘speech’” refers to oral communications of human beings, and since corporations are not human beings they cannot speak. Post, at 428, n. 55. This is sophistry. The authorized spokesman of a corporation is a human being, who speaks on behalf of the human beings who have formed that association — -just as the spokesman of an unincorporated association speaks on behalf of its members. The power to publish thoughts, no less than the power to speak thoughts, belongs only to human beings, but the dissent sees no problem with a corporation’s enjoying the freedom of the press. The same footnote asserts that “it has been ‘claimed that the notion of institutional speech ... did not exist in post-revolutionary America.’” This is quoted from a law-review article by a Bigelow Fellow at the University of Chicago (Fagundes, State Actors as First Amendment Speakers, 100 Nw. U. L. Rev. 1637 , 1654 (2006)), which offers as the sole support for its statement a treatise dealing with government speech, M. Yudof, When Government Speaks 42-50 (1983). The cited pages of that treatise provide no support whatever for the statement — unless, as seems overwhelmingly likely, the “institutional speech” referred to was speech by the subject of the law-review article, governmental institutions. The other authority cited in the footnote, a law-review article by a professor at Washington and Lee Law School, Bezanson, Institutional Speech, 80 Iowa L. Rev. 735 , 775 (1995), in fact contradicts the dissent, in that it would accord free-speeeh protection to associations.

*480 Justice Thomas, concurring in part and dissenting in part. I join all but Part IV of the Court’s opinion. Political speech is entitled to robust protection under the First Amendment. Section 203 of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (BCRA) has never been reconcilable with that protection. By striking down §203, the Court takes an important first step toward restoring full constitutional protection to speech that is “indispensable to the effective and intelligent use of the processes of popular government.” McConnell v. Federal Election Comm’n, 540 U. S. 93, 265 (2003) (Thomas, J., concurring in part, concurring in judgment in part, and dissenting in part) (internal quotation marks omitted). I dissent from Part IV of the Court’s opinion, however, because the Court’s constitutional analysis does not go far enough. The disclosure, disclaimer, and reporting requirements in BCRA §§201 and 311 are also unconstitutional. See id., at 275-277, and n. 10. Congress may not abridge the “right to anonymous speech” based on the “ ‘simple interest in providing voters with additional relevant information,’” id., at 276 (quoting McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Comm’n, 514 U. S. 334, 348 (1995)). In continuing to hold otherwise, the Court misapprehends the import of “recent events” that some amici describe “in which donors to certain causes were blacklisted, threatened, or otherwise targeted for retaliation.” Ante, at 370. The Court properly recognizes these events as “cause for concern,” ibid., but fails to acknowledge their constitutional significance. In my view, amici’s submissions show why the Court’s insistence on upholding §§201 and 311 will ultimately prove as misguided (and ill fated) as was its prior approval of § 203. Amici’s examples relate principally to Proposition 8, a state ballot proposition that California voters narrowly passed in the 2008 general election. Proposition 8 amended *481 California’s Constitution to provide that “[o]nly marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.” Cal. Const., Art. I, §7.5. Any donor who gave more than $100 to any committee supporting or opposing Proposition 8 was required to disclose his full name, street address, occupation, employer’s name (or business name, if self-employed), and the total amount of his contributions. 1 See Cal. Govt. Code Ann. § 84211(f) (West 2005). The California Secretary of State was then required to post this information on the Internet. See §§84600-84601; §§84602-84602.1 (West Supp. 2010); §§84602.5-84604 (West 2005); §85605 (West Supp. 2010); §§84606-84609 (West 2005). Some opponents of Proposition 8 compiled this information and created Web sites with maps showing the locations of homes or businesses of Proposition 8 supporters. Many supporters (or their customers) suffered property damage, or threats of physical violence or death, as a result. They cited these incidents in a complaint they filed after the 2008 election, seeking to invalidate California’s mandatory disclosure laws. Supporters recounted being told: “ ‘Consider yourself lucky. If I had a gun I would have gunned you down along with each and every other supporter,’ ” or, “ ‘we have plans for you and your friends.’ ” Complaint in ProtectMarriage.com —Yes on 8 v. Bowen, Case No. 2:09-cv-00058-MCE-DAD (ED Cal.), ¶ 31. Proposition 8 opponents also allegedly harassed the measure’s supporters by defacing or damaging their property. Id., ¶ 32. Two religious organizations supporting Proposition 8 reportedly received through the mail envelopes containing a white powdery substance. Id., ¶ 33. *482 Those accounts are consistent with media reports describing Proposition 8-related retaliation. The director of the nonprofit California Musical Theater gave $1,000 to support the initiative; he was forced to resign after artists complained to his employer. Lott & Smith, Donor Disclosure Has Its Downsides, Wall Street Journal, Dec. 26, 2008, p. A1B. The director of the Los Angeles Film Festival was forced to resign after giving $1,500 because opponents threatened to boycott and picket the next festival. Ibid. And a woman who had managed her popular, family-owned restaurant for 26 years was forced to resign after she gave $100, because “throngs of [angry] protesters” repeatedly arrived at the restaurant and “shout[ed] ‘shame on you’ at customers.” Lopez, Prop. 8 Stance Upends Her Life, Los Angeles Times, Dec. 14, 2008, p. Bl. The police even had to “arriv[e] in riot gear one night to quell the angry mob” at the restaurant. Ibid. Some supporters of Proposition 8 engaged in similar tactics; one real estate businessman in San Diego who had donated to a group opposing Proposition 8 “received a letter from the Prop. 8 Executive Committee threatening to publish his company’s name if he didn’t also donate to the ‘Yes on 8’ campaign.” Donor Disclosure, supra, at A13. The success of such intimidation tactics has apparently spawned a cottage industry that uses forcibly disclosed donor information to pre-empt citizens’ exercise of their First Amendment rights. Before the 2008 Presidential election, a “newly formed nonprofit group ... plannfed] to confront donors to conservative groups, hoping to create a chilling effect that will dry up contributions.” Luo, Group Plans Campaign Against G.O.P. Donors, N. Y. Times, Aug. 8, 2008, p. A15. Its leader, “who described his effort as ‘going for the jugular,’ ” detailed the group’s plan to send a “warning letter... alerting donors who might be considering giving to right-wing groups to a variety of potential dangers, including *483 legal trouble, public exposure and watchdog groups digging through their lives.” Ibid. These instances of retaliation sufficiently demonstrate why this Court should invalidate mandatory disclosure and reporting requirements. But amici present evidence of yet another reason to do so — the threat of retaliation from elected officials. As amici’s submissions make clear, this threat extends far beyond a single ballot proposition in California. For example, a candidate challenging an incumbent state attorney general reported that some members of the State’s business community feared donating to his campaign because they did not want to cross the incumbent; in his words, “T go to so many people and hear the same thing: “I sure hope you beat [the incumbent], but I can’t afford to have my name on your records. He might come after me next. ” ’ ” Strassel, Challenging Spitzerism at the Polls, Wall Street Journal, Aug. 1, 2008, p. All. The incumbent won reelection in 2008. My point is not to express any view on the merits of the political controversies I describe. Rather, it is to demonstrate — using real-world, recent examples — the fallacy in the Court’s conclusion that “[disclaimer and disclosure requirements . . . impose no ceiling on campaign-related activities, and do not prevent anyone from speaking.” Ante, at 366 (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). Of course they do. Disclaimer and disclosure requirements enable private citizens and elected officials to implement political strategies specifically calculated to curtail campaign-related activity and prevent the lawful, peaceful exercise of First Amendment rights. The Court nevertheless insists that as-applied challenges to disclosure requirements will suffice to vindicate those speech rights, as long as potential plaintiffs can “show a reasonable probability that disclosure . . . will subject them to threats, harassment, or reprisals from either Government of *484 ficials or private parties.” Ante, at 367 (internal quotation marks omitted). But the Court’s opinion itself proves the irony in this compromise. In correctly explaining why it must address the facial constitutionality of § 203, see ante, at 322-336, the Court recognizes that “[t]he First Amendment does not permit laws that force speakers to ... seek declaratory rulings before discussing the most salient political issues of our day,” ante, at 324; that as-applied challenges to §203 “would require substantial litigation over an extended time” and result in an “interpretive process [that] itself would create an inevitable, pervasive, and serious risk of chilling protected speech pending the drawing of fine distinctions that, in the end, would themselves be questionable,” ante, at 326-327; that “a court would be remiss in performing its duties were it to accept an unsound principle merely to avoid the necessity of making a broader ruling,” ante, at 329; and that avoiding a facial challenge to § 203 “would prolong the substantial, nationwide chilling effect” that § 203 causes, ante, at 333. This logic, of course, applies equally to as-applied challenges to §§201 and 311. Irony aside, the Court’s promise that as-applied challenges will adequately protect speech is a hollow assurance. Now more than ever, §§201 and 311 will chill protected speech because — as California voters can attest — “the advent of the Internet” enables “prompt disclosure of expenditures,” which “provide [s]” political opponents “with the information needed” to intimidate and retaliate against their foes. Ante, at 370. Thus, “disclosure permits citizens ... to react to the speech of [their political opponents] in a proper” — or undeniably improper — “way” long before a plaintiff could prevail on an as-applied challenge. 2 Ante, at 371. *485 I cannot endorse a view of the First Amendment that subjects citizens of this Nation to death threats, ruined careers, damaged or defaced property, or pre-emptive and threatening warning letters as the price for engaging in “core political speech, the 'primary object of First Amendment protection.”’ McConnell, 540 U. S., at 264 (Thomas, J., concurring in part, concurring in judgment in part, and dissenting in part) (quoting Nixon v. Shrink Missouri Government PAC, 528 U. S. 377, 410-411 (2000) (Thomas, J., dissenting)). Accordingly, I respectfully dissent from the Court’s judgment upholding BCRA §§201 and 311. BCRA imposes similar disclosure requirements. See, e. g., 2 U. S. C. § 434 (f)(2)(F) (“Every person who makes a disbursement for the direct costs of producing and airing electioneering communications in an aggregate amount in excess of $10,000 during any calendar year” must disclose “the names and addresses of all contributors who contributed an aggregate amount of $1,000 or more to the person making the disbursement”). But cf. Hill v. Colorado, 530 U.S. 703, 707-710 (2000) (approving a statute restricting speech “within 100 feet” of abortion clinics because it protected women seeking an abortion from “‘sidewalk counseling,”’ which “consists of efforts ‘to educate, counsel, persuade, or inform passersby about abortion and abortion alternatives by means of verbal or written *485 speech,’” and which “sometimes” involved “strong and abusive language in face-to-face encounters”).

Justice Stevens, with whom Justice Ginsbueg, Justice Breyer, and Justice Sotomayor join, concurring in part and dissenting in part. The real issue in this case concerns how, not if, the appellant may finance its electioneering. Citizens United is a wealthy nonprofit corporation that runs a political action committee (PAC) with millions of dollars in assets. Under the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (BCRA), it could have used those assets to televise and promote Hillary: The Movie wherever and whenever it wanted to. It also could have spent unrestricted sums to broadcast Hillary at any time other than the 30 days before the last primary election. Neither Citizens United’s nor any other corporation’s speech has been “banned,” ante, at 319. All that the parties dispute is whether Citizens United had a right to use the funds in its general treasury to pay for broadcasts during the 30-day period. The notion that the First Amendment *394 dictates an affirmative answer to that question is, in my judgment, profoundly misguided. Even more misguided is the notion that the Court must rewrite the law relating to campaign expenditures by for-profit corporations and unions to decide this case. The basic premise underlying the Court’s ruling is its iteration, and constant reiteration, of the proposition that the First Amendment bars regulatory distinctions based on a speaker’s identity, including its “identity” as a corporation. While that glittering generality has rhetorical appeal, it is not a correct statement of the law. Nor does it tell us when a corporation may engage in electioneering that some of its shareholders oppose. It does not even resolve the specific question whether Citizens United may be required to finance some of its messages with the money in its PAC. The conceit that corporations must be treated identically to natural persons in the political sphere is not only inaccurate but also inadequate to justify the Court’s disposition of this case. In the context of election to public office, the distinction between corporate and human speakers is significant. Although they make enormous contributions to our society, corporations are not actually members of it. They cannot vote or run for office. Because they may be managed and controlled by nonresidents, their interests may conflict in fundamental respects with the interests of eligible voters. The financial resources, legal structure, and instrumental orientation of corporations raise legitimate concerns about their role in the electoral process. Our lawmakers have a compelling constitutional basis, if not also a democratic duty, to take measures designed to guard against the potentially deleterious effects of corporate spending in local and national races. The majority’s approach to corporate electioneering marks a dramatic break from our past. Congress has placed special limitations on campaign spending by corporations ever since the passage of the Tillman Act in 1907, ch. 420, 34 Stat. 864 . We have unanimously concluded that this “reflects a *395 permissible assessment of the dangers posed by those entities to the electoral process,” FEC v. National Right to Work Comm., 459 U. S. 197, 209 (1982) (NRWC), and have accepted the “legislative judgment that the special characteristics of the corporate structure require particularly careful regulation,” id., at 209-210 . The Court today rejects a century of history when it treats the distinction between corporate and individual campaign spending as an invidious novelty born of Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, 494 U. S. 652 (1990). Relying largely on individual dissenting opinions, the majority blazes through our precedents, overruling or disavowing a body of case law including FEC v. Wisconsin Right to Life, Inc., 551 U. S. 449 (2007) (WRTL), McConnell v. FEC, 540 U. S. 93 (2003), FEC v. Beaumont, 539 U. S. 146 (2003), FEC v. Massachusetts Citizens for Life, Inc., 479 U. S. 238 (1986) (MCFL), NRWC, 459 U. S. 197 , and California Medical Assn. v. FEC, 453 U. S. 182 (1981). In his landmark concurrence in Ashwander v. TVA, 297 U. S. 288, 346 (1936), Justice Brandéis stressed the importance of adhering to rules the Court has “developed ... for its own governance” when deciding constitutional questions. Because departures from those rules always enhance the risk of error, I shall review the background of this case in some detail before explaining why the Court’s analysis rests on a faulty understanding of Austin and McConnell and of our campaign finance jurisprudence more generally. 1 I regret the length of what follows, but the importance and novelty of the Court’s opinion require a full response. Although *396 I concur in the Court’s decision to sustain BCRA’s disclosure provisions and join Part IV of its opinion, I emphatically dissent from its principal holding. I The Court’s ruling threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions across the Nation. The path it has taken to reach its outcome will, I fear, do damage to this institution. Before turning to the question whether to overrule Austin and part of McConnell, it is important to explain why the Court should not be deciding that question. Scope of the Case The first reason is that the question was not properly brought before us. In declaring § 203 of BCRA facially unconstitutional on the ground that corporations’ electoral expenditures may not be regulated any more stringently than those of individuals, the majority decides this case on a basis relinquished below, not included in the questions presented to us by the litigants, and argued here only in response to the Court’s invitation. This procedure is unusual and inadvisable for a court. 2 Our colleagues’ suggestion that “we are asked to reconsider Austin and, in effect, McConnell,” ante, at 319, would be more accurate if rephrased to state that “we have asked ourselves” to reconsider those cases. In the District Court, Citizens United initially raised a facial challenge to the constitutionality of §203. App. 23a- *397 24a. In its motion for summary judgment, however, Citizens United expressly abandoned its facial challenge, 1:07-cv-2240-RCL-RWR, Docket Entry No. 52, pp. 1-2 (May 16, 2008), and the parties stipulated to the dismissal of that claim, id., Nos. 53 (May 22,2008), 54 (May 23, 2008), App. 6a. The District Court therefore resolved the case on alternative grounds, 3 and in its jurisdictional statement to this Court, Citizens United properly advised us that it was raising only “an as-applied challenge to the constitutionality of... BCRA §203.” Juris. Statement 5. The jurisdictional statement never so much as cited Austin , the key case the majority today overrules. And not one of the questions presented suggested that Citizens United was surreptitiously raising the facial challenge to § 203 that it previously agreed to dismiss. In fact, not one of those questions raised an issue based on Citizens United’s corporate status. Juris. Statement (i). Moreover, even in its merits briefing, when Citizens United injected its request to overrule Austin , it never sought a declaration that § 203 was facially unconstitutional as to all corporations and unions; instead it argued only that the statute could not be applied to it because it was “fimded overwhelmingly by individuals. ” Brief for Appellant 29; see also id., at 10, 12, 16, 28 (affirming “as applied” character of challenge to §203); Tr. of Oral Arg. 4-9 (Mar. 24, 2009) (coun *398 sel for Citizens United conceding that § 203 could be applied to General Motors); id., at 55 (counsel for Citizens United stating that “we accept the Court’s decision in [WRTL]”). “ ‘It is only in exceptional cases coming here from the federal courts that questions not pressed or passed upon below are reviewed,’ ” Youakim v. Miller, 425 U. S. 231, 234 (1976) (per curiam) (quoting Duignan v. United States, 274 U. S. 195, 200 (1927)), and it is “only in the most exceptional cases” that we will consider issues outside the questions presented, Stone v. Powell, 428 U. S. 465, 481, n. 15 (1976). The appellant in this case did not so much as assert an exceptional circumstance, and one searches the majority opinion in vain for the mention of any. That is unsurprising, for none exists. Setting the case for reargument was a constructive step, but it did not cure this fundamental problem. Essentially, five Justices were unhappy with the limited nature of the case before us, so they changed the case to give themselves an opportunity to change the law. As-Applied and Facial Challenges This Court has repeatedly emphasized in recent years that “[fjacial challenges are disfavored.” Washington State Grange v. Washington State Republican Party, 552 U. S. 442, 450 (2008); see also Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood of Northern New Eng., 546 U. S. 320 , 329 (2006) (“[T]he ‘normal rule’ is that ‘partial, rather .than facial, invalidation is the required course,’ such that a ‘statute may ... be declared invalid to the extent that it reaches too far, but otherwise left intact’ ” (quoting Brockett v. Spokane Arcades, Inc., 472 U. S. 491, 504 (1985); alteration in original)). By declaring § 203 facially unconstitutional, our colleagues have turned an as-applied challenge into a facial challenge, in defiance of this principle. This is not merely a technical defect in the Court’s decision. The unnecessary resort to a facial inquiry “run[s] con *399 trary to the fundamental principle of judicial restraint that courts should neither anticipate a question of constitutional law in advance of the necessity of deciding it nor formulate a rule of constitutional law broader than is required by the precise facts to which it is to be applied.” Washington State Grange, 552 U. S., at 450 (internal quotation marks omitted). Scanting that principle “threaten[s] to short circuit the democratic process by preventing laws embodying the will of the people from being implemented in a manner consistent with the Constitution.” Id., at 451 . These concerns are heightened when judges overrule settled doctrine upon which the legislature has relied. The Court operates with a sledge hammer rather than a scalpel when it strikes down one of Congress’ most significant efforts to regulate the role that corporations and unions play in electoral polities. It compounds the offense by implicitly striking down a great many state laws as well. The problem goes still deeper, for the Court does all of this on the basis of pure speculation. Had Citizens United maintained a facial challenge, and thus argued that there are virtually no circumstances in which BCRA §203 can be applied constitutionally, the parties could have developed, through the normal process of litigation, a record about the actual effects of § 203, its actual burdens and its actual benefits, on all manner of corporations and unions. 4 “Claims of facial invalidity often rest on speculation,” and consequently “raise the risk of premature interpretation of statutes on the *400 basis of factually barebones records.” Id., at 450 (internal quotation marks omitted). In this case, the record is not simply incomplete or unsatisfactory; it is nonexistent. Congress crafted BCRA in response to a virtual mountain of research on the corruption that previous legislation had failed to avert. The Court now negates Congress’ efforts without a shred of evidence on how §203 or its state-law counterparts have been affecting any entity other than Citizens United. 5 Faced with this gaping empirical hole, the majority throws up its hands. Were we to confine our inquiry to Citizens United’s as-applied challenge, it protests, we would commence an “extended” process of “draw[ing], and then redrawing], constitutional lines based on the particular media or technology used to disseminate political speech from a particular speaker.” Ante, at 326. While tacitly acknowledging that some applications of § 203 might be found constitutional, the majority thus posits a future in which novel First Amendment standards must be devised on an ad hoc basis, and then leaps from this unfounded prediction to the unfounded conclusion that such complexity counsels the abandonment of all normal restraint. Yet it is a pervasive *401 feature of regulatory systems that unanticipated events, such as new technologies, may raise some unanticipated difficulties at the margins. The fluid nature of electioneering communications does not make this case special. The fact that a Court can hypothesize situations in which a statute might, at some point down the line, pose some unforeseen as-applied problems, does not come close to meeting the standard for a facial challenge. 6 The majority proposes several other justifications for the sweep of its ruling. It suggests that a facial ruling is necessary because, if the Court were to continue on its normal course of resolving as-applied challenges as they present themselves, that process would itself run afoul of the First Amendment. See, e. g., ante, at 326 (as-applied review process “would raise questions as to the courts’ own lawful authority”); ibid. (“Courts, too, are bound by the First Amendment”). This suggestion is perplexing. Our colleagues elsewhere trumpet “our duty ‘to say what the law is,’ ” even when our predecessors on the bench and our counterparts in Congress have interpreted the law differently. Ante, at 365 (quoting Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137, 177 (1803)). We do not typically say what the law is not as a hedge against future judicial error. The possibility that later courts will misapply a constitutional provision does not give *402 us a basis for pretermitting litigation relating to that provision. 7 The majority suggests that a facial ruling is necessary because anything less would chill too much protected speech. See ante, at 326-327, 329, 333-336. In addition to begging the question what types of corporate spending are constitutionally protected and to what extent, this claim rests on the assertion that some significant number of corporations have been cowed into quiescence by FEC “ ‘censorship].’ ” Ante, at 335. That assertion is unsubstantiated, and it is hard to square with practical experience. It is particularly hard to square with the legal landscape following WRTL, which held that a corporate communication could be regulated under §203 only if it was “susceptible of no reasonable interpretation other than as an appeal to vote for or against a specific candidate.” 551 U. S., at 470 (opinion of Roberts, C. J.) (emphasis added). The whole point of this test was to make §203 as simple and speech-protective as possible. The Court does not explain how, in the span of a single election cycle, it has determined The Chief Justice’s project to be a failure. In this respect, too, the majority’s critique of line-drawing collapses into a critique of the as-applied review method generally. 8 *403 The majority suggests that, even though it expressly dismissed its facial challenge, Citizens United nevertheless preserved it — not as a freestanding “claim,” but as a potential argument in support of “a claim that the FEC has violated its First Amendment right to free speech.” Ante, at 330; see also ante, at 376 (Roberts, C. J., concurring) (describing Citizens United’s claim as: “[T]he Act violates the First Amendment”). By this novel logic, virtually any submission could be reconceptualized as “a claim that the Government has violated my rights,” and it would then be available to the Court to entertain any conceivable issue that might be relevant to that claim’s disposition. Not only the as-applied/facial distinction, but the basic relationship between litigants and courts, would be upended if the latter had free rein to construe the former’s claims at such high levels of generality. There would be no need for plaintiffs to argue their case; they could just cite the constitutional provisions they think relevant, and leave the rest to us. 9 Finally, the majority suggests that though the scope of Citizens United’s claim may be narrow, a facial ruling is necessary as a matter of remedy. Relying on a law review article, it asserts that Citizens United’s dismissal of the facial challenge does not prevent us “ ‘from making broader pronouncements of invalidity in properly “as-applied” cases.’” Ante, at 331 (quoting Fallon, As-Applied and Facial Challenges and *404 Third-Party Standing, 113 Harv. L. Rev. 1321 , 1339 (2000) (hereinafter Fallon)); accord, ante, at 376 (opinion of Roberts, C. J.) (“Regardless whether we label Citizens United’s claim a ‘facial’ or ‘as-applied’ challenge, the consequences of the Court’s decision are the same”). The majority is on firmer conceptual ground here. Yet even if one accepts this part of Professor Fallon’s thesis, one must proceed to ask which as-applied challenges, if successful, will “properly” invite or entail invalidation of the underlying statute. 10 The paradigmatic case is a judicial determination that the legislature acted with an impermissible purpose in enacting a provision, as this carries the necessary implication that all fiiture as-applied challenges to the provision must prevail. See Fallon 1339-1340. Citizens United’s as-applied challenge was not of this sort. Until this Court ordered reargument, its contention was that BCRA § 208 could not lawfully be applied to a feature-length video-on-demand film (such as Hillary) or to a nonprofit corporation exempt from taxation under 26 U. S. C. § 501 (c)(4) 11 and funded overwhelmingly by individuals (such as itself). See Brief for Appellant 16-41. Success on either of these claims would not necessarily carry any implications for the validity of § 203 as applied to other types of broadcasts, other *405 types of corporations, or unions. It certainly would not invalidate the statute as applied to a large for-profit corporation. See Tr. of Oral Arg. 8, 4 (Mar. 24, 2009) (counsel for Citizens United emphasizing that appellant is “a small, nonprofit organization, which is very much like [an MCFL corporation],” and affirming that its argument “definitely would not be the same” if Hillary were distributed by General Motors). 12 There is no legitimate basis for resurrecting a facial challenge that dropped out of this case 20 months ago. Narrower Grounds It is all the more distressing that our colleagues have manufactured a facial challenge, because the parties have advanced numerous ways to resolve the case that would facilitate electioneering by nonprofit advocacy corporations such as Citizens United, without toppling statutes and precedents. Which is to say, the majority has transgressed yet another “cardinal” principle of the judicial process: “[I]f it is not necessary to decide more, it is necessary not to decide more,” PDK Labs. Inc. v. Drug Enforcement Admin., 362 F. 3d 786, *406 799 (CADC 2004) (Roberts, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment). Consider just three of the narrower grounds of decision that the majority has bypassed. First, the Court eould have ruled, on statutory grounds, that a feature-length film distributed through video-on-demand does not qualify as an “electioneering communication” under §203 of BCRA, 2 U. S. C. § 441b. BCRA defines that term to encompass certain communications transmitted by “broadcast, cable, or satellite.” § 434(f)(3)(A). When Congress was developing BCRA, the video-on-demand medium was still in its infancy, and legislators were focused on a very different sort of programming: short advertisements run on television or radio. See McConnell, 540 U. S., at 207 . The sponsors of BCRA acknowledge that the FEC’s implementing regulations do not clearly apply to video-on-demand transmissions. See Brief for Senator John McCain et al. as Amici Curiae 17-18. In light of this ambiguity, the distinctive characteristics of video-on-demand, and “[t]he elementary rule . . . that every reasonable construction must be resorted to, in order to save a statute from unconstitutionality,” Hooper v. California, 155 U. S. 648, 657 (1895), the Court could have reasonably ruled that §203 does not apply to Hillary. 13 Second, the Court could have expanded the MCFL exemption to cover § 501(c)(4) nonprofits that accept only a de minimis amount of money from for-profit corporations. Citizens United professes to be such a group: Its brief says it “is funded predominantly by donations from individuals who support [its] ideological message.” Brief for Appellant 5. Numerous Courts of Appeals have held that de minimis business support does not, in itself, remove an otherwise *407 qualifying organization from the ambit of MCFL. 14 This Court could have simply followed their lead. 15 Finally, let us not forget Citizens United’s as-applied constitutional challenge. Precisely because Citizens United looks so much like the MCFL organizations we have exempted from regulation, while a feature-length video-on-demand film looks so unlike the types of electoral advocacy Congress has found deserving of regulation, this challenge is a substantial one. As the appellant’s own arguments show, the Court could have easily limited the breadth of its constitutional holding had it declined to adopt the novel notion that speakers and speech acts must always be treated identically — and always spared expenditures restrictions — in the political realm. Yet the Court nonetheless turns its back on the as-applied review process that has been a staple of campaign finance litigation since Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U. S. 1 *408 (1976) (per curiam), and that was affirmed and expanded just two Terms ago in WRTL, 551 U. S. 449 . This brief tour of alternative grounds on which the ease could have been decided is not meant to show that any of these grounds is ideal, though each is perfectly “valid,” ante, at 329 (majority opinion). 16 It is meant to show that there were principled, narrower paths that a Court that was serious about judicial restraint could have taken. There was also the straightforward path: applying Austin and McConnell, just as the District Court did in holding that the funding of Citizens United's film can be regulated under them. The only thing preventing the majority from affirming the District Court, or adopting a narrower ground that would retain Austin , is its disdain for Austin . II The final principle of judicial process that the majority violates is the most transparent: stare decisis. I am not an absolutist when it comes to stare decisis, in the campaign finance area or in any other. No one is. But if this principle is to do any meaningful work in supporting the rule of law, it must at least demand a significant justification, beyond the preferences of five Justices, for overturning settled doctrine. “[A] decision to overrule should rest on some special reason *409 over and above the belief that a prior case was wrongly decided.” Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey, 505 U. S. 833, 864 (1992). No such justification exists in this case, and to the contrary there are powerful prudential reasons to keep faith with our precedents. 17 The Court’s central argument for why stare decisis ought to be trumped is that it does not like Austin . The opinion “was not well reasoned,” our colleagues assert, and it conflicts with First Amendment principles. Ante, at 363. This, of course, is the Court’s merits argument, the many defects in which we will soon consider. I am perfectly willing to concede that if one of our precedents were dead wrong in its reasoning or irreconcilable with the rest of our doctrine, there would be a compelling basis for revisiting it. But neither is true of Austin , as I explain at length in Parts III and IV, infra, at 414-478, and restating a merits argument with additional vigor does not give it extra weight in the stare decisis calculus. Perhaps in recognition of this point, the Court supplements its merits case with a smattering of assertions. The Court proclaims that “Austin is undermined by experience since its announcement.” Ante, at 364. This is a curious claim to make in a case that lacks a developed record. The majority has no empirical evidence with which to substantiate the claim; we just have its ipse dixit that the real world has not been kind to Austin . Nor does the majority bother to specify in what sense Austin has been “undermined. ” Instead it treats the reader to a string of non sequiturs: “Our Nation’s speech dynamic is changing,” ante, at 364; “[speakers have become adept at presenting citizens with sound bites, talking points, and scripted messages,” ibid.; “[corporations ... do not have monolithic views,” ibid. How any *410 of these ruminations weakens the force of stare decisis escapes my comprehension. 18 The majority also contends that the Government’s hesitation to rely on Austin’s antidistortion rationale “diminished]” “the principle of adhering to that precedent.” Ante, at 363; see also ante, at 382 (opinion of Roberts, C. J.) (Government’s litigating position is “most importan[t]” factor undermining Austin). Why it diminishes the value of stare decisis is left unexplained. We have never thought fit to overrule a precedent because a litigant has taken any particular tack. Nor should we. Our decisions can often be defended on multiple grounds, and a litigant may have strategic or case-specific reasons for emphasizing only a subset of them. Members of the public, moreover, often rely on our bottom-line holdings far more than our precise legal arguments; surely this is true for the legislatures that have been regulating corporate electioneering since Austin . The task of evaluating the continued viability of precedents falls to this Court, not to the parties. 19 *411 Although the majority opinion spends several pages making these surprising arguments, it says almost nothing about the standard considerations we have used to determine stare decisis value, such as the antiquity of the precedent, the workability of its legal rule, and the reliance interests at stake. It is also conspicuously silent about McConnell, even though the McConnell Court’s decision to uphold BCRA § 203 relied not only on the antidistortion logic of Austin but also on the statute’s historical pedigree, see, e. g., 540 U. S., at 115-132, 223-224 , and the need to preserve the integrity of federal campaigns, see id., at 126-129, 205-208 , and n. 88. We have recognized that “[s]tare decisis has special force when legislators or citizens ‘have acted in reliance on a previous decision, for in this instance overruling the decision would dislodge settled rights and expectations or require an extensive legislative response.’ ” Hubbard v. United States, 514 U. S. 695, 714 (1995) (plurality opinion) (quoting Hilton v. South Carolina Public Railways Comm’n, 502 U. S. 197, 202 (1991)). Stare decisis protects not only personal rights involving property or contract but also the ability of the elected branches to shape their laws in an effective and coherent fashion. Today’s decision takes away a power that we have long permitted these branches to exercise. State legislatures have relied on their authority to regulate corporate electioneering, confirmed in Austin , for more than a century. 20 The Federal Congress has relied on this authority for a comparable stretch of time, and it specifically relied on Austin throughout the years it spent developing and de *412 bating BCR A. The total record it compiled was 100,000 pages long. 21 Pulling out the rug beneath Congress after affirming the constitutionality of §203 six years ago show's great disrespect for a coequal branch. By removing one of its central components, today’s ruling makes a hash out of BCRA’s “delicate and interconnected regulatory scheme.” McConnell, 540 U. S., at 172 . Consider just one example of the distortions that will follow: Political parties are barred under BCRA from soliciting or spending “soft money,” funds that are not subject to the statute’s disclosure requirements or its source and amount limitations. 2 U. S. C. § 441i; McConnell, 540 U. S., at 122-126 . Going forward, corporations and unions will be free to spend as much general treasury money as they wish on ads that support or attack specific candidates, whereas national parties will not be able to spend a dime of soft money on ads of any kind. The Court’s ruling thus dramatically enhances the role of corporations and unions — and the narrow interests they represent — vis-a-vis the role of political parties— and the broad coalitions they represent — in determining who will hold public office. 22 Beyond the reliance interests at stake, the other stare decisis factors also cut against the Court. Considerations of antiquity are significant for similar reasons. McConnell is only six years old, but Austin has been on the books for two decades, and many of the statutes called into question by today’s opinion have been on the books for a half century or more. The Court points to no intervening change in circumstances that warrants revisiting Austin . Certainly nothing *413 relevant has changed since we decided WRTL two Terms ago. And the Court gives no reason to think that Austin and McConnell are unworkable. In fact, no one has argued to us that Austin’s rule has proved impracticable, and not a single for-profit corporation, union, or State has asked us to overrule it. Quite to the contrary, leading groups representing the business community, 23 organized labor, 24 and the nonprofit sector, 25 together with more than half of the States 26 urge that we preserve Austin . As for McConnell, the portions of BCR A it upheld may be prolix, but all three branches of Government have worked to make §203 as user-friendly as possible. For instance, Congress established a special mechanism for expedited review of constitutional challenges, see note following 2 U. S. C. §437h; the FEC has established a standardized process, with clearly defined safe harbors, for corporations to claim that a particular electioneering communication is permissible under WRTL , see 11 CFR §114.15 (2009); 27 and, as noted above, The Chief Justice crafted his controlling opinion in WRTL with the express goal of maximizing clarity and administrability, 551 U. S., at 469-470, 473-474 . The case for stare decisis may be bolstered, we have said, when *414 subsequent rulings “have reduced the impact” of a precedent “while reaffirming the decision’s core ruling.” Dickerson v. United States, 530 U. S. 428, 443 (2000). 28 In the end, the Court’s rejection of Austin and McConnell comes down to nothing more than its disagreement with their results. Virtually every one of its arguments was made and rejected in those cases, and the majority opinion is essentially an amalgamation of resuscitated dissents. The only relevant thing that has changed since Austin and McConnell is the composition of this Court. Today’s ruling thus strikes at the vitals of stare decisis, “the means by which we ensure that the law will not merely change erratically, but will develop in a principled and intelligible fashion” that “permits society to presume that bedrock principles are founded in the law rather than in the proclivities of individuals.” Vasquez v. Hillery, 474 U. S. 254, 265 (1986). III The novelty of the Court’s procedural dereliction and its approach to stare decisis is matched by the novelty of its ruling on the merits. The ruling rests on several premises. First, the Court claims that Austin and McConnell have “banned” corporate speech. Second, it claims that the First Amendment precludes regulatory distinctions based on speaker identity, including the speaker’s identity as a corpo *415 ration. Third, it claims that Austin and McConnell were radical outliers in our First Amendment tradition and our campaign finance jurisprudence. Each of these claims is wrong. The So-Called “Ban” Pervading the Court’s analysis is the ominous image of a “categorical ba[n]” on corporate speech. Ante, at 361. Indeed, the majority invokes the specter of a “ban” on nearly every page of its opinion. Ante, at 319, 321, 324, 327, 328, 329, 330, 333, 337, 339, 340, 343, 344, 345, 346, 347, 349, 351, 354, 355, 358, 360, 361, 362, 364, 369. This characterization is highly misleading, and needs to be corrected. In fact it already has been. Our cases have repeatedly pointed out that, “[c]ontrary to th