The Supreme Court issued its decision in the Wisconsin Right to Life (WRTL) case this morning ruling by 5-4 that the group had a First Amendment right to air the ads that named Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) who was up for re-election. The case challenged the constitutionality of a part of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (BCRA), the "electioneering communications" rule which bans incorporated nonprofits from airing any broadcast that refers to federal candidates 60 days before an election or 30 days before a primary. And the court found that yes, as applied to the facts of WRTL's 2004 ads, the law was unconstitutional and the broadcasts were not the equivalent of express campaign speech. Justices Scalia, Kennedy, and Thoms would have declared the section of BCRA unconstitutional, but Roberts and Alito only said the group's ads should not have been banned. According to the opinion; the First Amendment requires us to err on the side of protecting political speech rather than suppressing it. We conclude that the speech at issue in this as-applied challenge is not the functional equivalent of express campaign speech. We further conclude that the interests held to justify restricting corporate campaign speech or its functional equivalent do not justify restricting issue advocacy, and accordingly we hold that BCRA §203 is unconstitutional as applied to the advertisements at issue in these cases. Read the opinion here. More analysis to come.