Count on it: when you see a 5-4 decision in the U.S. Supreme Court, it means—except for rare exceptions like the “Obamacare” vote—very bad news for liberals.

And it happened again yesterday, with the court voting to eliminate the cap on the total amount of money individuals could contribute to all federal candidates in an election. The five-vote majority included all of the usual conservative suspects: Roberts, who wrote the majority opinion), Alito, Scalia, Thomas, and Kennedy. Thomas wrote his own concurring opinion, and you can see the full court decision in McCutcheon et al. v. Federal Election Commission, with Breyer’s withering dissent—co-signed by Sotomayor, Ginsberg, and Kagan—here.

As the New York Times reports:

Wednesday’s decision did not affect familiar base limits on contributions from individuals to candidates, currently $2,600 per candidate in primary and general elections. But it said that overall limits of $48,600 by individuals every two years for contributions to all federal candidates violated the First Amendment, as did separate aggregate limits on contributions to political party committees, currently $74,600. . . . Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing for four justices in the controlling opinion, said the overall limits could not survive First Amendment scrutiny. “There is no right in our democracy more basic,” he wrote, “than the right to participate in electing our political leaders.” In a dissent from the bench, Justice Stephen G. Breyer called the majority opinion a disturbing development that raised the overall contribution ceiling to “the number infinity.” “If the court in Citizens United opened a door,” he said, “today’s decision may well open a floodgate.” [JAC: In the “Citizens United” case, the Court ruled that corporations could spend unlimited amounts of money on election campaigns.] In his written opinion, Justice Breyer said Wednesday’s decision would allow “a single individual to contribute millions of dollars to a political party or to a candidate’s campaign.” He was joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

The ruling was on First Amendment grounds, with individual political contributions considered by the majority as a form of “free speech”. That’s a bizarre twist, because it isn’t immediately obvious that such donations constitute “speech”, just as it doesn’t seem obvious that corporations are people, another path the court has broken. (The previous donation caps were also also allowed in the name of “political speech,” but the limits were set low to prevent corruption.)

Although the $2,600 per candidate limit looks small, it’s deceptive. The total amount of spending per federal campaign cycle is now $3.6 million per individual, and you can put all of that, if you wish, toward a single candidate simply by directing it to that candidate through special fund-raising committees. The donations, in effect, get laundered.

The problem, of course, is that—at least in America—money talks, and money has a huge influence on the outcome of elections. That’s why candidates engage in a frenzy of fundraising, and why the sizes of candidates’ warchests are regularly reported. You can, in fact, buy elections in this country through advertising (often negative) and other forms of promotion.

This shouldn’t happen in a democracy. Those having more money should not be allowed to unduly influence the political process. Chief Justice Roberts claimed that the Court’s brief was not to level the playing field, but that in fact is what we need. Nobody, be they liberal or conservative (like the Koch brothers), should be able to disproportionately influence an election merely because they’re rich. If one needs spending caps, then they must be sensible ones, affordable by the average American.

As Justice Breyer said in his dissent:

The anticorruption interest that drives Congress to regulate campaign contributions is a far broader, more important interest than the plurality acknowledges. . . It is an interest in maintaining the integrity of our public governmental institutions. Where enough money calls the tune, the general public will not be heard.

Welcome to the plutocracy.