--- title: Ted Cruz Supreme Court Case Could Change Campaign Finance description: The case could determine how much candidates can recoup from spending personal funds on their own races. canonical: https://time.com/6139955/ted-cruz-supreme-court-campaign-finance/ author: Madeleine Carlisle article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2022-01-18T18:45:57.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:51:46.550Z article:section: Politics og:title: The Supreme Court Could Decide if Ted Cruz Gets $10,000. It Matters More Than You Think og:description: The case could determine how much candidates can recoup from spending personal funds on their own races. og:url: https://time.com/6139955/ted-cruz-supreme-court-campaign-finance/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt39b7c540042cda06/698a219322fb8595efe2d07d/ted-cruz-scotus.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1024 og:image:height: 576 og:image:alt: Senator Ted Cruz on Captiol Hill og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The Supreme Court Could Decide if Ted Cruz Gets $10,000. It Matters More Than You Think twitter:description: The case could determine how much candidates can recoup from spending personal funds on their own races. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt39b7c540042cda06/698a219322fb8595efe2d07d/ted-cruz-scotus.jpg?branch=production&width=1024&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # The Supreme Court Could Decide If Ted Cruz Gets $10,000\. It Matters More Than You Think > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: September 2026. ## TIME D.C. Brief: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition D.C. Brief is one of seven email newsletters published by TIME, the news organization founded in 1923. Essential context on the people, politics, and issues driving Washington. D.C. Brief goes beyond the Washington headlines to explain the politics, personalities and power dynamics shaping what happens next. 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It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3/newsletters?i=f946b86d-8e2d-4f6e-9f3e-dc11dd9841c0&cr=time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3-v1) ## Video: The History You Didn't Learn: Black Women and the Right to Vote [Watch (HLS stream): The History You Didn't Learn: Black Women and the Right to Vote](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/quG5ZZp3.m3u8) (9:13)  _Published 2020-12-08. The History You Didn't Learn is a series that sheds light on past events that may have been omitted, misleading, or just downright wrong in our history education in school._  by [Madeleine Carlisle](https://time.com/author/madeleine-carlisle/)  ## Madeleine Carlisle Jan 18, 2022 6:45 PM UTC  Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) speaks with reporters at the U.S. Capitol Building on Wednesday, Jan. 12, 2022 in Washington, DC. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) speaks with reporters at the U.S. Capitol Building on Wednesday, Jan. 12, 2022 in Washington, DC. Kent Nishimura—Los Angeles Times/Getty Images  by [Madeleine Carlisle](https://time.com/author/madeleine-carlisle/)  ## Madeleine Carlisle Jan 18, 2022 6:45 PM UTC The year was 2018\. Ariana Grande’s _Sweetener_ topped the charts. _Avengers: Infinity War_ smashed records. The U.S. midterm elections were in full swing, with Republicans on the way to holding the Senate and Democrats poised to take control of the House. And the day before Sen. Ted Cruz won his reelection, he loaned his campaign $260,000 out of his own pocket. The Texas Republican’s loan now sits at the center of a [Supreme Court](https://time.com/6127632/supreme-court-reform-commission/) case that could impact the role money plays in politics and determine how candidates recoup personal funds they spent on their own races. Federal law dictates that if candidates loan money to their campaign, they can’t pay themselves back more than $250,000 using funds raised after Election Day—meaning funds from donors who know the outcome of the race. (Candidates can pay themselves back as much money as they’d like using funds raised before the election, as long as they do so within 20 days after the election.) Cruz’s campaign paid him back $250,000, but he didn’t get that last $10,000\. He and his campaign sued the Federal Election Commission (FEC), arguing that the loan repayment cap discourages candidates from loaning money to their campaigns and limits political speech, violating the First Amendment. In response, the U.S. Solicitor General argues that the cap is meant to prevent quid pro quo corruption, and that post-election donations that reimburse candidates are inherently more corrupting than other donations because they go directly into a candidate’s pocket. A district court sided with Cruz and struck down the law in June 2021\. The Supreme Court will now hear the case on Jan. 19 and make the ultimate determination about whether the cap can stand. It’s unclear if Cruz will get his $10,000 back even if he wins the case. But the results of the suit could span far beyond the Texas Senator. Progressive advocates argue that if the law is overturned, deep-pocketed donors could buy favor with elected officials by paying the candidates back for large personal campaign loans after they’re assured of the candidate’s victory. But Cruz**’**s allies argue that the law unduly limits political speech by financially restraining candidates from supporting their own campaigns, and stacks the deck in favor of the rich candidates who can afford to spend their own money without getting repaid. After Donald Trump spent millions of dollars of his own fortune on his winning presidential campaign in 2016, House and Senate candidates poured a record amount of their own money into campaigns in the 2018 midterms, [according to CNN](https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/05/politics/self-funding-candidates-record-midterms/index.html). As more of America’s one percent seem poised to run for office—and spend big on their campaigns in the process—the future of the loan repayment ceiling could determine how much money they can take from people who might be hoping to curry favor with the newly elected officials. A Cruz spokesperson tells TIME that the Senator is “confident that the Supreme Court will agree with the unanimous decision made by the three-judge District Court that this law is an unconstitutional restriction on free speech that serves merely to benefit incumbent politicians and the super wealthy.” The FEC would not comment on pending litigation, and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) directed TIME to its filings in the case when asked for comment. _Make sense of what matters in Washington._ [_Sign up for the daily D.C. Brief newsletter._](https://cloud.newsletters.time.com/politics?source=dc%5Farticle) Cruz admits his true goal was never the $10,000: in court filings, he said that he only made the loan in the first place so he could bring the lawsuit and overturn what he argues is an unconstitutional law. Before the district court, Cruz’s team stipulated that the “sole and exclusive motivation” behind Cruz’s actions in making the loan was to “establish a factual basis for this challenge.” The FEC says that confession should disqualify him, arguing the case represents a “self-inflicted” injury that the Court shouldn’t remedy. As with many campaign finance cases, the suit could have broader implications than the fate of the challenged law. [The Supreme Court](https://time.com/6127193/supreme-court-reform-expansion/) has long held that campaign finance regulation generally doesn’t violate the First Amendment as long as it prevents quid pro quo corruption or the appearance of corruption. But what falls into those two buckets is hotly debated. If the high court’s 6-3 conservative supermajority chooses to opine on the definition of corruption or the appearance of corruption in its ruling, or how the Court should evaluate those questions, it could ripple across all sorts of campaign finance regulation. --- ### More from TIME --- Miriam Becker-Cohen, appellate counsel at the progressive Constitutional Accountability Center, which filed a brief in support of the FEC, argues that giving money to a candidate after they’ve won so they can reimburse themselves “plainly gives rise to the appearance of quid pro quo corruption.” Tara Malloy, the senior director of appellate litigation and strategy at the Campaign Legal Center, which also filed a brief in support of the FEC, worries that institutional political players, including political operatives, lobbyists, and the heads of PACs, would benefit if the ceiling is struck down because “they know how valuable these post-election contributions can be.” “We know that winning candidates are much more successful raising money post-election,” she says. The other side takes issue with the idea that post-election contributions are more corrupting than pre-election donations. The FEC draws an **“**analogy between repaying a loan and giving a politician a gift,” says Don Daugherty, a senior litigator at the Institute for Free Speech, which advocates against restricting political speech and filed a brief in support of Cruz. “But it’s not the same.” Instead of corrupting elections, Cruz and his supporters argue that removing the cap would make the political process more accessible to a wider swath of candidates. Self-financing of campaigns is more common among challengers who lack the name-recognition and fundraising network of incumbents, Daugherty says, so the $250,000 repayment ceiling not only limits political speech, in his view, but also disincentivizes people from getting involved in campaigns in the first place. “We think political activity and political speech is protected by the First Amendment, and in a democracy is inherently a good thing,” he says. “And if you’re going to restrict it, you better have a doggone good reason for doing so.” ## Transcript Kind: captions Language: en-US It's really important that we tell the truth about who contributed to the country that we live in today. That telling only a part of our history telling only a part of our narrative makes it seem as if there are only one group of people. There's only one type of person. We all know that that's not true. When students learn about women's suffrage in school, they often learn about Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, the so called mothers of the movement. And they are taught that it all started with a meeting in Seneca Falls, New York in 1848. Oftentimes, the story of the Seneca Falls meeting is told as a kind of origin story. As the beginning of a movement for women's rights and ultimately, a movement for women's suffrage. And yet, when we realize the meeting is some 300 people, principally white, middle class women in a relatively remote upstate New York village, that is a hint that we probably need to look at some other places to get a fuller story. For Africa American women who had been organizing inside churches and other places since the 20s and 30s, this was not a particularly important moment, nor was it a meeting they would have attended. Nor were the demands that they made particularly germane to the lives of women living under the twin oppressive forces of racism and sexism. Black women are excluded at Seneca Falls, because they're not really invited. Two years later, a much bigger national convention on women's rights takes place. The 1850 meeting in Worcester, Massachusetts... Stanton and Anthony aren't even there. It was the first National Women's Rights meeting. So in some ways, that's really cohering activism that's taking place around the country in a way that Seneca Falls was just a local impromptu convention. One of the women who spoke there was famed abolitionist Sojourner Truth. Sojourner Truth will emerge later in the woman's movement as an important speaker on women's rights. She will also emerge as an abolitionist. By 1850, Sojourner Truth is very much a presence in women's rights circles really shaping the debates, but she didn't begin at Seneca Falls at all. So, with so much activity happening and women's rights in the mid-19th century, why did Seneca Falls, a small meeting with only white woman attending become one of the most talked about in history? Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who was at the Seneca Falls meeting and was one of the organizers...and Susan Anthony...well, these two, along with some allies, begin to write the history of women's suffrage. And when they do, not surprisingly, perhaps, they privilege their own experiences and they settle on Seneca Falls as their origin story. Stanton and Anthony are dealing with a world where emancipation is the new reality and many people are saying to women, "Black men's right to vote must happen now," for reasons of free people's safety. And Stanton and Anthony will say "No," "women's suffrage should come first." And they are unusual in the Women's Rights Coalition that they demand this. They're staunchly opposed to Black men voting before white women... In unspeakably racist terms. And "Our movement..." they say repeatedly, "is the most important movement for human rights ever inaugurated." And they're undermining, really, the memory of abolition and the memory of emancipation in that process. It's no surprise then, that in history written by primarily white women, there are many Black voting rights activists we don't learn about. I think the world of Ida B. Wells and her activism... She's a Black woman who owned two newspapers, and she was an anti-lynching activist. And she was a founder of the Alpha Suffrage Club, which is Chicago's first black suffrage organization. While they fought and advocated for the right to vote for all women, they were mistreated within the larger suffrage movement because of their race. The Suffrage March in 1913, when Ida B. Wells showed up with the Illinois delegation and Alice Paul, who was a popular suffragette at the time, instructed them to walk to the back of the crowd. And while many of the Black women who showed up that day did... Ida B. Wells refused. The women who pushed the story of Seneca Falls died before the 19th Amendment was passed in 1920. But, the legacy of excluding Black woman persisted. "Susan B. Anthony and her followers have won, for women, the right to vote." It's easy to think of the story of women's suffrage as a kind of fully emancipatory and celebratory story that's, you know, just necessarily progressive. And in the following November, the ladies appeared at the polls on Election Day by hundreds of thousands. "The emancipation of womanhood in the United States was now complete." The 19th Amendment does not invest anybody with the right to vote. And we don't spend nearly enough time thinking about the language of the amendment, which is really key, saying you may not discriminate in voting on the basis of sex, it does not say women have a right to vote, which actually does not exist. For many white women clearing the obstacle of sex was sufficient to get them voting access. When the 19th amendment is adopted, the open secret is that too many millions of African American women in this country will not be able to vote because the amendment doesn't do anything to override the segregationist laws, the Jim Crow laws in the South, like poll taxes and literacy tests that are going to be imposed on black women, such that they won't be able to vote even after the 19th Amendment. We don't realize the ways in which the white suffrage movement threw women of color under the bus, allowed their continued disenfranchisement to go ahead, allowed their brutalization of their bodies to go ahead, and say nothing. We lose track of the fact that lots of other women are not emancipated in this story. That those women's rights are sacrificed. After 1920, African American women have to look up from the 19th Amendment to not only recognize that they are still disenfranchised, they have to look up to answer the question, "So, how are we going to win a right to vote?" That is the moment for the building of a new movement for voting rights. One that will take Black women and men until 1965, in passage of the Voting Rights Act. So, you don't win the right to vote and then that's just it. Throughout the course of history, for every expansion of voting rights, we have a backlash that seeks to make it more difficult for people to vote. That seeks to shrink the electorate and shrink the number of people that participate in our democracy. One recent and significant backlash happened in 2013 when the Supreme Court case Shelby County v. Holder removed some of the protections of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Even as we celebrate the centennial of the 19th Amendment, activists like Nsé Ufot remind us that voting rights remain threatened in many places. "Georgians have an opportunity to save our democracy." The State of Georgia has closed over 10% of their polling locations. Voting rights advocates have witnessed nearly 2 million people purged from Georgia's voter pool. I'm urging my supporters to go into the polls and watch very carefully. Black voters are subject to intimidation. New Americans are subject to intimidation. The 2020 election is the most recent example of the organizing power of Black women, as Ufot and others are being credited with turning Georgia blue for the first time in 28 years. I think that it's harmful that we only learn about white suffragists because it doesn't tell the full story of how we won. And if we're going to be able to fight future oppression, knowing the real story about how our ancestors looked oppression in the face and then defeated it helps us as we build toward the communities that we want to live in. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/6139955/ted-cruz-supreme-court-campaign-finance/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/6139955/ted-cruz-supreme-court-campaign-finance/"},"headline":"The Supreme Court Could Decide If Ted Cruz Gets $10,000. 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