The Supreme Court "opened a new chapter in the long-running debate over the role of money in politics by agreeing to decide whether Vermont's strict limits on campaign spending and contributions are constitutional," the New York Times reports. Vermont is currently "the only state to have placed limits on candidates' spending."
"The court's action suggested, although it did not guarantee, that the justices might be ready to revisit their 29-year-old precedent, Buckley v. Valeo, which in equating money with speech has been widely interpreted as ruling out any restrictions on expenditures by candidates."
The Washington Post notes the court will also hear "a challenge to provisions of the 2002 McCain-Feingold campaign law that prevent corporations or labor unions from buying ads with unregulated money about a specified candidate in the weeks just before an election."