A Groundbreaking Way to Fight Citizens United

Hawaii could enact the first law to counteract the Supreme Court’s devastating decision.

If there was still any confusion about why American politics have become so deranged, the 2024 election made it abundantly clear: Political donors poured $1.9 billion in dark money into campaigns, and that was just one type of political spending in one election cycle. The other obvious problem is this Congress isn’t going to pass meaningful campaign finance reform anytime soon. Republican leadership is having too much fun handing out tax breaks to the billionaires and corporations that funded their campaigns.

But that’s not the whole story. There are lawmakers working to wrest our democracy back from this oligarchic madness. In Hawaii, state lawmakers are on the verge of passing legislation that could be the domino that sets off meaningful campaign finance reform in states across the country – and that would be a big deal no matter where you live.

The pioneering Hawaii legislation, Senate Bill 2471, is the first of its kind in the nation and would basically render the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision irrelevant within the state. As of today, the bill has passed in the House and Senate and is in a reconciliation process that in Hawaii is the final step before a bill goes to the governor’s desk. Governor Josh Green has said he’ll sign any bill that passes constitutional muster. That means any day now we could see a major win for the movement to get big money – especially dark money – out of politics.

“The fact is that over the last sixteen years, our system has been corrupted by unlimited spending by corporations that are given tremendous benefits under Hawaii state law for taking corporate form,” Senator Jarrett Keohokalole, one of the bill’s sponsors, told the local station KHON2 News. “I’m really proud that Hawaii is positioned to lead the way on overturning this really bad [Citizens United] decision that has corrupted our democracy for the last sixteen years.”

For years, conservative and corporate interest groups like ALEC and Americans for Prosperity – funded by the same deep-pocketed donors as President Trump and Republicans in Congress – have focused on passing state-level legislation that both advances their strategy goals and also disempowers the opposition. For Republican state lawmakers that has meant taking power from we the people via gerrymandering, restricting unions, etc. This Hawaii legislation changes the rules of the game in a positive way to disempower a source of political strength that far too often leads to corruption.

The power that’s being dismantled is Big Pharma, Big Oil, Big Tech, and all the other wealthy interests with a reason to hide their political spending in secretive dark money groups. So, while it might look like a similar strategy Republicans have used, it has the opposite goal: These state lawmakers are working to empower people to make the system more like a functioning democracy.

The approach advocates are taking with SB 2471 is interesting. The legislation doesn’t prohibit corporate political spending in the direct, explicit way you might expect. The Citizens United decision infamously hinged on questions of speech, as the majority of the justices decided that restrictions on political spending restricted corporate speech rights. With that in mind, it’s safe to assume that if Congress or state lawmakers pass meaningful campaign finance reform, corporate or rightwing groups will sue to block the legislation immediately. So, to establish durable solutions, campaign finance reform advocates need to find a way around the Supreme Court conservative majority’s habit of using the First Amendment to justify all manner of detrimental decisions. The authors of the Hawaii legislation did just that when drafting this bill.

Here’s how the Hawaii strategy works: The bill redefines the powers Hawaii grants to corporations that operate within the state by taking away from those corporations the ability to spend in Hawaii political campaigns. Campaign finance reform experts say this legislation will stand up against legal challenges because states have wide leeway to define what they count as a corporation and what powers those corporations have from a business perspective. With that authority, states can legally decide that corporations don’t have the power to spend in elections.

If passed, SB 2471 would take effect in 2027 and immediately diminish the power of big corporations to spend political dollars in Hawaii – even if they’re based elsewhere. Every corporation registered to do business in Hawaii would need to follow the new law. One of the industries that spends the most in Hawaii is real estate developers. No surprise, affordable housing is a major issue in the state. If giant developers’ political spending is reined in, local officials will be less beholden to their interests and can instead consider development with Hawaiians in mind.

The bill would also diminish the role of dark money in Hawaii’s elections. According to the Center for American Progress’s (CAP) legal analysis, the bill wouldn’t completely ban super PACs, which are a major source of political spending that shapes elections in Hawaii (and every state), but the bill would do a lot to diminish super PACs’ power: SB 2471 would limit their ability to spend money in Hawaii that they’ve received from dark money groups.

“Super PACs would still be able to spend in Hawaii’s politics, but they could only spend money they’ve received from human beings,” CAP Senior Fellow Tom Moore explained in his analysis of the legislation. That would cut off an especially nefarious form of political spending wherein the public has no good way of knowing who paid for a campaign or lobbying effort.

For the foreseeable future, given how absolutely committed the Trump Administration is to doling out favors to the donor class – whether giving billionaires tax breaks, deregulating oil and gas companies, or pardoning cryptocurrency magnates – we need to find different venues for meaningful campaign finance reform. Hawaii can provide a blueprint for how to prevent super PACs from spending dark money by passing state laws. Montana could be next.

In November, Montana voters could decide on a ballot initiative based on the same premise of limiting corporations’ authority as the strategy for reducing corporate political spending. At least 12 states have introduced bills similar to Hawaii’s SB 2471. So, no matter how dire national politics are right now, this could just be the beginning of a new wave of campaign finance reform that returns power to the people.