The Independent View: Now Comes Citizen United 3

The sweeping language and logic of Wednesday’s Supreme Court decision on campaign finance may imperil other legal restrictions on money in politics.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. took an expansive view of First Amendment rights and a narrow one of political corruption. According to experts in election law, there is no reason to think that the march toward deregulating election spending will stop with the ruling in McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission.

For now, federal law bars corporations from making contributions to candidates, though they can spend what they like independently to support or oppose candidates.

The next case may arrive soon. At their private conference on Friday, the justices are scheduled to consider whether to hear Iowa Right to Life Committee v. Tooker, No. 13-407, a petition from James Bopp Jr., one of the lawyers on the winning side in the McCutcheon case.

It challenges an Iowa law that bans contributions from corporations but allows them from unions.

Mr. Bopp said he had scoured Chief Justice Roberts’s controlling opinion in the McCutcheon case for hints and clues. “I didn’t see any real blatant signals about what they would entertain in the future,” he said. “On the other side, this is the latest in a series of cases from a five-member majority that is very friendly to the First Amendment.”

The distinction the law makes between corporations and unions violates equal protection principles, he told the justices. In any event, he added, “banning corporate political contributions violates the First Amendment.”

The Supreme Court may announce on Monday whether it will hear the case.

“My fear is that the court’s next target is the most revered pillar of campaign finance: public financing,” Heather Gerken, a law professor at Yale said. “The lines are in the water, and we’ll see if the Roberts court bites.”

She added that the court sometimes seemed blind to the real-world consequences of its rulings. “We want judges to be shielded from politics,” she said, “but we don’t want them to be naive about politics.”