The Supreme Court once again sided with Republicans in a legal dispute over the price of political advertising — all but ensuring political parties will have access to low-cost rates when coordinating with candidates through the 2026 election.
In an unsigned decision, the court gave federal regulators more time to consider a challenge to party committees’ access to cheaper television and radio ads.
The Trump administration and Republican Party committees asked the Supreme Court last week to pause a ruling from the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that would have compelled the Federal Communications Commission to resolve a challenge by Democratic Senate nominees to guidelines issued by the agency in March.
To comply with the lower court order, “the FCC must triage its ongoing deliberation process and prepare its final order on an extremely expedited timeline,” the court wrote. Requiring the FCC to forego that process “is itself an injury that cannot be remedied after the fact,” the order says.
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The new guidelines granted party committees’ access to lower television and radio ad rates when spending in coordination with candidates, who get lower ad rates in the runup to an election. The Supreme Court in June axed longstanding coordination limits between party committees and candidates, expanding party committees’ threshold for booking at lower rates.
Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson noted they would have denied Republicans’ motion to stay the lower court decision.
The Trump administration and Republican Party committees argued at the Supreme Court that changing the rules so close to an election would cause too much uncertainty and urged the court to allow the FCC process to play out.
“Both orders irreparably injure political committees like the NRCC and NRSC by injecting uncertainty into their contracts, upsetting business deals, and ultimately depriving them of a statutory right on the eve of the election,” the party committees wrote in a filing Saturday in support of the stay. “The upcoming election demands consistency and predictability, not rushed changes.”
In a separate response, the Justice Department accused the Democratic Senate candidates of trying to “mute their opponents’ political speech.”
Shortly after the FCC issued the guidelines in March, Democratic candidates including Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia and former Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio challenged the agency’s legal premise that party-coordinated ads qualify for the discounted rates.
In a separate ruling last month, the Supreme Court halted an appeals court ruling that would have outright blocked the political ad price guidelines.
Then, earlier this month, the appeals court accused the FCC of dragging its feet on the review and gave the agency 48 hours to resolve the legal dispute.
“The Commission cannot delay a decision until the eve of the election and then object to the clearly foreseeable consequences of that delay,” the candidates wrote in a response to the Supreme Court over the weekend.
The Supreme Court temporarily delayed the lower court’s deadline while it weighed the case, ultimately deciding it was “inappropriate.”
“The Communications Act requires the Commission to act on every application it receives, but it does not obligate the Commission to act within a particular timeframe,” the court wrote.
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