[4] Amendments to FECA in 1974, after the Watergate scandal, limited the total amount of direct contributions an individual could make to national political parties and federal candidates in a given year.

[10] Plaintiff Shaun McCutcheon is a businessman and electrical engineer from suburban Birmingham, Alabama, who is a campaign contributor and self-described activist of the Republican Party.

United States Solicitor General Donald Verrilli Jr. argued for the appellees: the Federal Election Commission and the Obama administration.

Justices Breyer, Ginsburg, Sotomayor and Kagan dissented, arguing that the decision "creates a loophole that will allow a single individual to contribute millions of dollars to a political party or to a candidate's campaign.

"[27] In response to the decision, a coalition of environmental, voting rights, labor, and government reform groups rallied outside of the Supreme Court.

[29] Writing for The Nation, Ari Berman wrote, "The Court's conservative majority believes that the First Amendment gives wealthy donors and powerful corporations the carte blanche right to buy an election but that the Fifteenth Amendment does not give Americans the right to vote free of racial discrimination.

"[31] Samuelson also said that there are poor politicians who cannot communicate and so need money "to hire campaign staff, build a website, buy political spots and the like" to "affect how people behave.

"[31] The Center for Competitive Politics, a leading group advocating for deregulation of campaign finance, heralded the decision in a statement: "the Court's conclusion was common sense: the law limited an individual to contributing the legal maximum to just 18 candidates.

"[32] In The New Yorker, Jeffrey Toobin wrote that "the language of Chief Justice John Roberts's opinion suggests that the Court remains committed to the project announced most prominently in the Citizens United case, four years ago: the deregulation of American political campaigns.

Following the decision, SCOTUSblog published a symposium on the case with a foreword by Collins and Skover as well as commentaries by Floyd Abrams, Jan Baran, Rick Hasen, Burt Neuborne, Ilya Shapiro, Paul M. Smith, and Fred Wertheimer (April 3–4, 2014).