User:9H48F/sandbox/NLRC

Campaign financing
In 1978, James Bopp was hired to serve as legal counsel and the NRLC began to have more involvement in elections to further influence state and federal legislation to advance their anti-abortion position. In 1980, the National Right to Life Political Action Committee (NRL PAC) was founded to support anti-abortion and almost exclusively Republican candidates. Also that year, Bopp led a walkout of conservative delegates from a White House Conference on Families and defended the NLRC's 1980 presidential election voter guides from legal challenges of improper electioneering by a nonprofit.

By the 1990s, the NLRC became a major player in campaign financing through its $2 million campaign contributions in the 1996 presidential election. In 1999, the NLRC aggressively lobbied against the 1999 Shays-Meehan bill, which later became the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (BCRA), because it would reclassify many of its and other nonpartisan groups' ads as campaign contributions. A bipartisan group of legislators including John McCain, Ronnie Shows, and Zach Wamp criticized the organization for getting involved in issues that did not affect the unborn.

In 2003, Bopp filed a lawsuit on behalf of the NLRC against the Federal Election Commission about whether BCRA violates the First Amendment in its prohibition of the use of "soft money" in campaign financing. On May 1, 2003 the district court issued judgment on the case and the NLRC appeals to the Supreme Court. Later that year, the case was consolidated along with eleven other lawsuits into McConnell v. FEC. In the ruling, the Supreme Court upheld the control of soft money and the regulation of electioneering communications in BCRA.

The death of Justice William Rehnquist and retirement of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor changed the Supreme Court to a conservative majority and in 2007, NLRC's affiliate, Wisconsin Right to Life brought a case against the FEC again challenging BCRA provisions. In FEC v. Wisconsin Right to Life, Inc., the justices held that issue ads may not be banned from the months preceding a primary or general election.