Nearly 40 years ago in Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U. S. 1 (1976) (per curiam), this Court considered the constitu­tionality of laws that imposed limits upon the overall amount a single person can contribute to all federal candi­dates, political parties, and committees taken together. The Court held that those limits did not violate the Con­stitution. Id., at 38; accord, McConnell v. Federal Election Comm’n, 540 U. S. 93, 138, n. 40, 152–153, n. 48 (2003) (citing with approval Buckley’s aggregate limits holding).

The Buckley Court focused upon the same problem that concerns the Court today, and it wrote:

“The overall $25,000 ceiling does impose an ultimate restriction upon the number of candidates and com­mittees with which an individual may associate him­self by means of financial support. But this quite modest restraint upon protected political activity serves to prevent evasion of the $1,000 contribution limitation by a person who might otherwise contribute massive amounts of money to a particular candidate through the use of unearmarked contributions to po­litical committees likely to contribute to that candi­date, or huge contributions to the candidate’s political party. The limited, additional restriction on associa­tional freedom imposed by the overall ceiling is thus no more than a corollary of the basic individual con­tribution limitation that we have found to be constitu­tionally valid.” 424 U. S., at 38.

Today a majority of the Court overrules this holding. It is wrong to do so. Its conclusion rests upon its own, not a record-based, view of the facts. Its legal analysis is faulty: It misconstrues the nature of the competing constitutional interests at stake. It understates the importance of protecting the political integrity of our governmental institutions. It creates a loophole that will allow a single individual to contribute millions of dollars to a political party or to a candidate’s campaign. Taken together with Citizens United v. Federal Election Comm’n, 558 U. S. 310 (2010), today’s decision eviscerates our Nation’s campaign finance laws, leaving a remnant incapable of dealing with the grave problems of democratic legitimacy that those laws were intended to resolve.