In Rebuke Supreme Court Reverses Montana High Court

This doesn't happen very often. The US Supreme Court accepted a case on appeal from Montana and then without hearing any arguments or accepting any new briefs issued a summary judgement. In a 5-4 decision the SCOTUS overturned a decision by the Supreme Court of the State of Montana in which they had held that the US Supreme Court's decision in Citizen's United did not apply to Montana state law. The Citizen's United case was the one where the SCOTUS had ruled that any entity can donate as much money as it wants to political parties PACs and campaigns.

For the record I think that was one of the worst decisions in the last couple of decades. No entity that doesn't have the vote should be allowed to donate any money to political campaigns or causes. But I digress.

In Montana the state's Supreme Court tried to say that the case was not applicable to state law and that Montana's century old  prohibition on corporate campaign donations was valid. As a matter of law that proposition was absurd on its face. This was the Montana Supreme Court thumbing their nose at the US Supreme Court. And today the US Supreme Court basically slapped them down and told them to behave. The entire decision of the SCOTUS consisted of two painfully brief paragraphs.

Purely on points of law the SCOTUS was right today. Unfortunately they were right in defense of a wrongly decided case.