Investor: I want freedom.
Shrewd investor: I have Shrewd'm!
- Anonymous Shrewd
- Manlobbi
Halls of Shrewd'm / US Policy
No. of Recommendations: 17
Hawaii just slammed the door on Citizens United.
No corporate donations for state and local elections.
No. of Recommendations: 4
SNIP
“Most people who are frustrated with the influence of corporate money in our politics have been told the same thing for 16 years solid: there’s nothing we can do about it. The Supreme Court decided in Citizens United that corporations have a constitutional right to spend in elections, and that’s that.
If you want to fix it, you need a constitutional amendment, or a different Supreme Court, or both. Good luck.”
https://www.civilbeat.org/2026/04/hawaii-might-jus...
No. of Recommendations: 3
Hawaii just slammed the door on Citizens United.
No corporate donations for state and local elections.
It's almost certainly going to get struck down as unconstitutional. You can't do this under the SCOTUS' construction of the First Amendment. It doesn't really matter whether you structure it as a "we're prohibiting corporations from spending on political speech" vs. "we're saying corporations don't get the power to engage in political speech in the first place." The constitutional infirmity is the same - you're permitting some speech and prohibiting other speech based on the content of the speech, which is a no-no under First Amendment rules. Government doesn't get to pick which messages it will allow corporations to say or not say.
No. of Recommendations: 3
It's almost certainly going to get struck down as unconstitutional.
Not so fast, there.
I thought I gained a bit of insight from the last discussion of Citizens United.
And that was: in contrast to popular summaries, the decision does not say that money equals speech. It says that corporations have the same right to free speech as individuals.
Now the way I’m reading the bits posted here, it sounds like HI is banning political donations from corporations to state and local races. But that wouldn’t violate free speech rights because corporations can still run their own ads for or against candidates. It’s only donations directly TO a campaign that have been limited.
And that should be ok, at least to my understanding.
—Peter
No. of Recommendations: 2
Now the way I’m reading the bits posted here, it sounds like HI is banning political donations from corporations to state and local races.That's what I thought reading the OP. I had already partially written a response pointing out that Hawaii's action had nothing to do with
Citizens United if it related to political donations.
But then I looked it up - and it appears that it provides that corporations don't have the power to engage in political speech to promote or defeat candidates or proposals in elections:
https://www.courthousenews.com/hawaii-legislature-...
Overwhelming odds are that it will be held unconstitutional, for all the reasons we've talked about on the boards.
No. of Recommendations: 4
Overwhelming odds are that it will be held unconstitutional,
Having read the news article you linked, it sounds like getting taken to court and losing based on Citizens United is expected. The Hawaii legislature wants to try to overturn that ruling, and the way to do that is with a law that expected to be challenged in court.
It also sounds like Hawaii is uniquely situated to talk about corporate governance vs governance by citizens based on their pre-statehood history. And it appears to be a bipartisan stand, based on the nearly unanimous votes in the legislature.
It will be interesting to see how it all plays out. I would not hold out much hope with the current USSC. But it will take a few years to get there, and who knows what the makeup of the court will be by then.
—Peter
