Melissa Murray
speaker
3,183 appearances
12 recordings
1 series
first heard Jun 2026
last heard 21 Sep
Melissa Murray’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 12 in all, peaking in Sep 2026 with 5.
Appearances
And predictably, this ruling was another big win for the Republican Party ahead of the midterm elections.
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Let me set the scene for you.
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On June 30th, 2026, the Supreme Court issued a decision on its merits docket in a campaign finance dispute called National Republican Senatorial Committee versus FEC.
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In that case, the court invalidated a campaign finance law that limited coordinated expenditures by political parties on the ground that the challenge law that restricted that kind of coordinated expenditure violated the First Amendment rights of political parties.
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When that decision was announced, Leah Kate and I said that it would have real impact on campaign spending in the run-up to the midterms.
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And lo and behold, your favorite Cassandras were absolutely right because on the Friday before Labor Day weekend, this court decided to issue a shadow docket ruling where it cited its recent decision in NRSC versus FEC.
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And this particular shadow docket decision concerns the new guidance that the Federal Communications Commission Media Bureau issued in March, 2026.
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So what did that guidance do?
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Well, traditionally, under federal law, political candidates are guaranteed deeply discounted ad rates in the weeks leading up to an election.
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But the new guidance that was issued in March 2026 extended those discounted rates to certain party-coordinated ads, not just to individual candidates.
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And predictably, Democratic candidates across the country took that personally.
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Four of them, Representative Kristen McDonnell Rivett of Michigan, Senator John Ossoff of Georgia, Sherrod Brown, who is running for a Senate seat in Ohio, and Roy Cooper, who is running for a Senate seat in North Carolina, all joined forces to file suit challenging the new guidance.
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These Democratic challengers sought expedited review at the Fourth Circuit, which they received, and where they prevailed.
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The government, with the National Republican Congressional Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee as interveners, decided to go to Daddy SCOTUS to ask SCOTUS to please stay.
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The Fourth Circuit's ruling is so unfair to us.
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And, shocking nobody, Daddy SCOTUS granted the requested relief, concluding that the Fourth Circuit lacked statutory authority to hear the case because the FCC—
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had not yet issued a decision on the candidates' application for review.
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Of course, the candidates went to the Fourth Circuit without waiting for a decision from the commission because, one, it's pretty clear what the commission's ruling on its own guidance would be, and two, the election is literally in a couple of months.
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Time is ticking, and this is a pretty critical question.
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All to say, the court also determined that the Republican Party committees had demonstrated that if the lower court ruling remained in place, they would suffer irreparable harm because they would not be able to access the more favorable ad rates, quote, thereby hampering their efforts to reach the electorate in the critical weeks leading up to the midterms.
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Showing 801–820 of 3,183 · page 41 of 160
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