Their goal was to cast a shadow over this candidate and place her in the negative opinion of the electorate. In 2008, Citizens United completed production of this documentary and decided to broadcast it on television (Sitaraman, 2014). As Citizens United well knew, doing this within 60 days of a general election or 30 days of a primary violates the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002. This sparked the landmark case Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission of 2010. Before the Supreme Court, this case was compared to the precedent set in Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, which addressed a similar issue. The Court was expected to rule on the narrowly worded question initially posed: Could this conservative lobbyist group, Citizens United, screen its film? Citizens United argued that Section 203 of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act violated the First Amendment and that when applied to their documentary and associated advertisements, Sections 201 and 203 were also unconstitutional when applied to the circumstances (Sitaraman, 2014). The United States District Court rejected their order. Section 203 was not unconstitutional. The district court also ruled that the film was not directly degrading to Clinton.