Supreme Court takes up dispute between Ted Cruz and FEC over campaign loans
CBSN
Washington — The Supreme Court on Thursday said it will hear a dispute between Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) over campaign finance rules limiting the repayment of a candidate's personal loans to their campaigns.
The appeal from the FEC of a lower court decision is one of five cases the high court added to its docket as it prepares to begin its new term Monday. The legal battle over the campaign finance restrictions joins high-profile cases involving abortion, the Second Amendment and religious liberty that the justices will weigh this term.
Cruz's dispute with the FEC centers around a provision of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 that sets a $250,000 cap on the amount of money raised after Election Day that a campaign may use to repay debt owed to the candidate. Federal law allows a campaign to borrow money from either a third-party lender or from the candidate himself, but the Texas senator argues the $250,000 repayment limit violates the First Amendment.
Ashley White received her earliest combat action badge from the United States Army soon after the first lieutenant arrived in Afghanistan. The silver military award, recognizing soldiers who've been personally engaged by an attacker during conflict, was considered an achievement in and of itself as well as an affirming rite of passage for the newly deployed. White had earned it for using her own body to shield a group of civilian women and children from gunfire that broke out in the midst of her third mission in Kandahar province. All of them survived. She never mentioned the badge to anyone in her battalion.