High court declines to hear GOP appeal

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a Republican Party challenge to a state law limiting political party contributions to candidates.

After nearly four years of battling the contribution limits, the state GOP conceded Monday that the case was over.

"We're not surprised. We expected this outcome," said Scott Baker, a spokesman for the Missouri Republican Party. "We just wanted to be clear on exactly what the law was. We wanted to make sure we executed all our legal options, and we now have and now we know where we stand." Last November, the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis upheld Missouri's limits.

That decision came after the U.S Supreme Court in August ordered the appeals court to reconsider an earlier decision that struck down the limits approved in 1994.

High court justices had directed the Missouri case be reconsidered in light of a Colorado case in which they upheld federal limits on money that political parties can spend on behalf of candidates.

Attorney General Jay Nixon, a Democrat who defended the state limits in the case, said Republicans had fought a case they had no chance of winning.