Vote Law Spending Curbs Restricted : High Court Exempts Nonprofit Groups’ Election Outlays

A sharply divided Supreme Court Monday narrowed slightly the scope of the federal election law, ruling that nonprofit political groups not affiliated with businesses may not be held to the same spending limits as corporate political action committees and labor unions.

On a 5-4 vote, the high court ruled that applying the election law’s restrictions on political activity to such independent groups violates their constitutional right to free speech.

Supporters of the campaign finance laws breathed a sigh of relief after reading the opinion, noting that most such groups are not large or well-funded.

No ‘Real Damage’

“This decision doesn’t do real damage to the campaign finance laws,” said Fred Wertheimer, president of Common Cause. “The danger was that (the court) could open the door to all corporations and labor unions making independent expenditures (in behalf of candidates), and the bottom line is, (it) didn’t do that.”

The federal election law forbids corporations, labor unions or affiliated groups to spend money “in connection with any election to any public office.”

It allows them to form special campaign funds, or political action committees, for political activity but requires the periodic filing of reports on contributions and limits the amounts spent on various races.

Anti-Abortion Campaign

After the 1978 elections, the Federal Election Commission charged that Massachusetts Citizens for Life Inc., a small anti-abortion group, did not abide by the regulations in spending $9,000 to send out newsletters urging voters to support a series of “pro-life” candidates.

But Justice William J. Brennan Jr., writing for the court, said that, even though the group was a corporation, it did not correspond with the intent of the law because it was not affiliated with a business or labor union.

The law’s intent, he said, was that “organizations that amass great wealth in the economic marketplace not gain unfair advantage in the political marketplace.”

” . . . Where at all possible, government . . . must avoid infringing on speech that does not pose the danger that prompted the regulation,” Brennan said. He was joined in the majority by Antonin Scalia, Sandra Day O’Connor, Thurgood Marshall and Byron H. White.

In dissent, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist said that the court should “defer” to Congress in such matters. “We are obliged to leave the drawing of lines in cases such as this to Congress if those lines are within constitutional bounds,” Rehnquist said. He was joined by Justices Byron R. White, Harry Blackmun and John Paul Stevens.

The ruling (FEC vs. Massachusetts Citizens for Life, 85-701) is the first in which Scalia has not voted with Rehnquist since he was named to the court this year.

Bar on Leftists

Meanwhile, the justices moved into a larger political controversy, agreeing to decide whether the Reagan Administration has broad power to bar foreign leftists from visiting the United States.

In a case to be argued next fall, the court will try to make clear the line between who may and may not be excluded because of their political views.

In 1952, at the height of the Cold War, Congress said that the government could keep out aliens who were likely “to engage in activities which would be prejudicial to the public interest” or were members of “the Communist or any other totalitarian party.” However, in 1982, Congress said that foreigners should not be kept out on political grounds except when their visit “would be contrary to the security interests of the United States.”

Sandinista Excluded

The New York Civil Liberties Union appealed a 1983 exclusion of Tomas Borge, an official of Nicaragua’s Sandinista regime, two members of Cuba’s Communist Party and an Italian politician representing a peace group that the State Department says is “controlled and financed by” the Soviet Union.

In March, an appeals court in Washington said that the exclusion was unwarranted because the visitors were coming here to make speeches, not “to engage in activities” that threatened the nation’s security. On Monday, the justices agreed to hear the government’s appeal of that ruling. Oral arguments in the case (Reagan vs. Abourezk, 86-656) probably will be heard next October.