Amid the thousands of pages of arguments that have been spilled on campaign finance law and the hundreds of protagonists, one to keep an eye on is a 14-year-old girl from Georgia called Emily Echols. Senators McCain and Feingold, in their wisdom, decided that if Emily wanted to give some of her allowance money to a political candidate, the federal government ought to intervene to stop her. Their view was enshrined in the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002. Among its provisions was a section that said, “An individual who is 17 years old or younger shall not make a contribution to a candidate or a contribution or donation to a committee of a political party.”

Emily, bless her, went ahead and, after the law was passed, made a $200 donation to Saxby Chambliss, who was running for Senate in Georgia. That set up a collision between the campaign finance law and the First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of speech and of petition for all Americans, regardless of their age.

Now, the campaign speech restriction crowd will no doubt argue that donations from minors are being used cynically to circumvent contribution limits by parents seeking to funnel money through their unsuspecting children. We’d say that’s a fine way to get around the limits. In this case, however, there’s not even any evidence that Emily’s parents had reached the limit. Young Emily is just interested in politics.

She can’t vote yet, but donating money to candidates is one way that she can participate in the political process. With all the bemoaning of how young people are disengaged from political life in America, banning them from giving to candidates would be a particularly bad idea, even if it were constitutional.

As it is, a panel of judges who ride the D.C. Circuit struck down the ban on donations by minors. They made their ruling May 2. But yesterday, in a stunning default, the judges stayed their own decision pending a review by the Supreme Court. As the Associated Press reported, “The court had struck down some ad restrictions and the minor ban as unconstitutional but put them back into effect when it suspended its decision.”

The AP quoted a lawyer, James Bopp Jr., who is fighting for the First Amendment against the campaign-speech restrictionists. “The court agrees these provisions strip us of our rights, but they’re going to allow them to be enforced anyway,” Mr. Bopp said. “That’s just astonishing.” We’d like to see Senators McCain and Feingold, along with the joeys of the D.C. Circuit, look Emily Echols in the eye and explain to her why the First Amendment doesn’t apply to her — and why, even if it does, it may be suspended by Congress, then restored by a court, then suspended again by judicial fiat.