The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear another potential landmark case impacting campaign contribution limits.

Three years ago, the court’s Citizens United ruling (pdf) tossed limits on independent campaign spending by corporations and unions.

Now, justices will consider a Republican challenge to certain limits on contributions made by an individual directly to political candidates and some political committees.

The plaintiffs in the case are Shaun McCutcheon, a conservative activist and businessman from Alabama, and the Republican National Committee (RNC). They object to current two-year limits on overall spending to candidates (currently $48,600) and groups ($74,600). As it stands, an individual could donate the maximum amount to 18 candidates. A ruling in favor of the RNC would allow individuals to donate unlimited amounts to unlimited numbers of candidates.

Not under consideration are contribution limits to individual candidates and groups, which are currently $2,600 per election to federal candidates, $32,400 per year to national party committees, $10,000 per year to state party committees and $5,000 per year to other political committees.

“In Citizens United, the court resisted tinkering with the rules for contribution limits,” Richard L. Hasen, an expert on election law at the University of California, Irvine, told The New York Times. “This could be the start of chipping away at contribution limits.”

McCutheon lost his previous legal challenge to the overall limits in a September 2012 ruling (pdf) by a three-judge District of Columbia court panel in the case, McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission. “It is not the judicial role to parse legislative judgment about what limits to impose,” the judges wrote in their decision.

The new Supreme Court case, which may be addressed during the court’s upcoming October term, has triggered alarm in some camps. “An aggregate contribution limit was passed in the wake of the Watergate money scandals and was upheld in the 1976 Supreme Court decision Buckley v. Valeo,” Tara Malloy, senior counsel for the Campaign Legal Center, said in a statement. In the absence of such limits, “corruption, or at the very least the appearance of corruption, would be the rule rather than the exception in Washington.”

-Noel Brinkerhoff, Danny Biederman

To Learn More:

Justices Take Case on Overall Limit to Political Donations (by Adam Liptak, New York Times)

Supreme Court to Consider Limits on Individual Political Contributions (by Robert Barnes, Washington Post)

Citizens United Ruling Opened New Era in Campaign Financing (by Noel Brinkerhoff and David Wallechinsky, AllGov)

40% of Outside Campaign Money was Made Possible by Supreme Court Ruling (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)

Citizens United Ruling Gave more than $500 Million to 4 Consulting Firms (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)

Hidden Fallout from Citizens United Case: Employers Allowed to Badger Employees with Election Propaganda (by Noel Brinkerhoff and David Wallechinsky, AllGov)