A D.C. law that limits how much an elected official can fundraise to pay off any personal loans they made to their campaign could be at risk in the wake of a Supreme Court ruling this week that overturned a similar federal regulation.

In the decision announced Tuesday, the court’s conservative majority said that the regulation — which prohibits elected officials from using post-election fundraising to pay off any more than $250,000 in loans they made to their own campaign — violated the First Amendment’s protections of political speech.

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts said self-funding could help new candidates become more visible and competitive, and that no evidence had been shown that allowing them to fundraise to pay back those loans after they win would result in them improperly doing the bidding of their donors.

In her dissent for the court’s three liberal members, Justice Elena Kagan disagreed. “Political contributions that will line a candidate’s own pockets, given after his election to office, pose a special danger of corruption,” she wrote.

That was largely the reasoning adopted by the D.C. Council in 2018 when it passed sweeping campaign finance reform that included a new restriction: elected officials can now only fundraise to pay off $25,000 of personal loans they made to their own campaign, and only do so within six months of the election they won.

That provision was motivated in part by the federal law the Supreme Court overturned this week, but also the case of Attorney General Karl Racine, who loaned his 2014 campaign $451,000 and then fundraised $100,000 after taking office to help pay it off. (After questions were raised about possible conflicts of interest, he stopped raising money to pay off the debt.) More recently, Councilmember Brooke Pinto (D-Ward 2) held a fundraiser to pay down some personal loans she made to her 2020 campaigns. While she did observe the $25,000 limit, she held the fundraisers outside the six-month time limit. (She said it was an unwitting mistake.)

But legal experts say D.C.’s law is on shaky legal ground in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling. At least 10 states and D.C. have laws that mirrored or closely echoed the federal law that has been tossed out.

“The Supreme Court decision is based on the First Amendment, which means that even local laws that are similar to the federal law that was struck down would likely be unconstitutional,” says Paul Berman, a professor of law at the George Washington University Law School.

Tara Malloy, an attorney with the Campaign Legal Center, which urged the court to let the federal law stand, agrees that D.C.’s law is at risk — but isn’t yet doomed.

“The most likely outcome if there was a well-founded lawsuit with a candidate with standing, this Cruz decision would make it hard for D.C. to defend the law,” she says. “But it is important to note that if you take the court at its word, the opinion was concerned that the [Department of Justice] had not shown any evidence that there were quid pro quo exchanges from the fundraising. If D.C. has a better record or scandal to point to, they would be differently situated. The court’s main concern was the government had not shown a specific risk of corruption resulting from post-election repayment.”

Both the D.C. attorney general’s office and the D.C. Office of Campaign Finance said they were both reviewing the ruling and assessing any possible impacts on D.C.’s own restrictions.

But even if D.C.’s law were taken off the books, any possible impact on local elections could be minimal. And that’s because of the city’s new public financing program, which offers qualifying candidates for office matching public funds for their campaigns — provided they stick to specific rules aimed at limiting the influence of businesses and wealthy contributors.

The program has been popular since it launched in 2020, and almost every candidate running for office in the 2022 primary cycle is using public financing. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson is not, opting to raise money traditionally, which means he has accepted larger contributions from businesses, contractors, and lobbyists. Mayoral candidate James Butler also isn’t; he loaned his campaign $3,000 and has raised a small amount from other sources. Attorney general candidate Bruce Spiva has largely self-funded his campaign with a $300,000 loan.

In an interview this week, Spiva said he assumed most of what he put into his own campaign wouldn’t be paid back, though he didn’t completely foreclose on the possibility of fundraising to pay some of it back — under the existing law that limits it to $25,000.

“My assumption is that probably most of [the money] is just a sunk investment,” he said. “I haven’t forsworn if I had some kind of massive outpouring of donations not paying myself back. But my mindset when I was doing it is that this is probably gone.”