Supreme Court to States, Screw Off.....

In a case billed as "Citizens United II," the US Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear new arguments on the wisdom of its 2010 Citizens United decision, the court's most controversial campaign finance ruling in years. By a 5-4 vote, the court summarily reversed a decision by the Montana Supreme Court upholding that state's century-old ban on independent political spending by corporations. This deals a blow to reformers who hoped to undo or chip away at Citizens United and stem the expansion of special interest money in elections.

The case, known as American Tradition Partnership, Inc. v. Bullock, began with an act of defiance. After the Supreme Court ruled in Citizens United that bans on independent political spending by corporations were unconstitutional, 23 states stopped enforcing the bans they already had in place. Not Montana, which continued to enforce its Corrupt Practices Act, a longstanding law that banned independent corporate political spending. When American Tradition Partnership (ATP), a conservative nonprofit committed to fighting "environmental extremism," challenged the law, the state supreme court upheld it. That led ATP to petition the US Supreme Court to hear the case on appeal.

The high court faced several options with the American Tradition Partnership case. One was summary reversal—an immediate overturning of the Montana Supreme Court's ruling without hearing any new arguments. Another option was to allow new arguments on the case, which would essentially be a rearguing of part of the core logic in Citizens United—namely, that independent political expenditures "do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption."

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/06/supreme-court-citizens-united-montana?