Assemblymember Chris Rogers Introduces Legislation to End Limitless Corporate Spending on Elections
Press release from Assemblymember Chris Rogers (Please remember that this is not neutral reporting but a press release from an interested party):
Last week, Assemblymember Chris Rogers introduced AB 1984, legislation to address the grievous impacts that unfettered corporate spending has had on our democratic process. This bill would rewrite the powers granted to corporations in the corporate code to explicitly state that corporations that operate in the state of California do not have the power to spend money in elections. AB 1984 is designed to end the disastrous legacy the Citizens United ruling has had on elections in California.
“At the heart of the Citizens United ruling lied an egregious assumption – that unlimited corporate campaign spending would not lead to corruption because it assumed this spending would be transparent and independent. The Court was wrong,” said Assemblymember Chris Rogers. “Today, more than 15 years later, just under 80% of Americans agree that large independent expenditures by wealthy donors and corporations in elections give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption. This cuts across all political parties, with 84% of Democrats, 74% of Republicans, and 79% of independents believing this to be the case.”
In 2010, the Supreme Court issued a ruling on Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission that struck down century-old prohibitions on corporate “independent” spending entirely, thereby deregulating money that doesn’t go directly to a candidate or party. Since that date, the United States has seen an ever-increasing amount of money spent in elections—reaching a new high in 2024 with over $1.9 billion in spending on federal elections alone.
Lower courts applying the Citizens United ruling extended it to invalidate almost all fundraising and spending restrictions for groups that purport to be separate from candidates. This allowed for the rise of unregulated “dark money” groups that can accumulate and spend limitless funds to influence our elections, all without disclosing who is footing the bill. Over 80 percent of the total amount spent by billionaires during the 2024 election cycle was spent through channels that were prohibited prior to Citizens United, while overall billionaire spending in elections has multiplied by a factor of 163 since the ruling.
This year, eight states will try to curtail the Citizens United ruling through the corporate code, not the elections code. This approach relies on centuries of court rulings that have helped to distinguish corporate rights vs corporate powers.
AB 1984 builds off the work being done in Montana to directly address the unlimited spending of corporations by restricting them from all spending on elections. Simply put, corporations are a function of law and they do not exist without the explicit approval of the government. Additionally, the government has the authority to grant them specific powers. This bill is a simple majority bill and, while its passage will not overturn Citizens United, it will have a sizable impact on returning electoral power to the average citizen.
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Trump would subvert those laws.. Bitcoin, hotel rooms, donations”from billionaires, golden bibles, credit cards…
Citizens United was about the government trying to ban ads for a movie about a politician 30 days before an election. If you think government censoring political speech is good, I’m sorry but you’re not much of an American. .
Here’s the realities:
1. The case began because of a documentary about a politician.
The conservative nonprofit Citizens United produced a documentary called Hillary: The Movie, about then-Senator Hillary Clinton, who was a candidate in the 2008 presidential primaries. They wanted to make the film available (and advertise it) close to the election, but the law then in force—the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA)—treated such ads and broadcasts as prohibited “electioneering communications” if aired within 30 days of a primary election or 60 days of a general election.
2. BCRA’s “electioneering communications” rule restricted corporate political ads.
Under BCRA, a corporation or union was prohibited from using general treasury funds to pay for independent political ads that mention a federal candidate close to an election. Broadcast ads that mentioned a candidate within those time windows were treated the same even if not coordinated with a campaign.
3. Citizens United sued, arguing these restrictions were unconstitutional as applied to their film and its ads.
Citizens United filed suit challenging the law’s restrictions and sought to block enforcement against the movie and related advertisements. The case worked its way up to the U.S. Supreme Court.
4. In 2010 the Supreme Court ruled 5–4 in Citizens United v. FEC.
The Court held that the First Amendment prohibits the government from restricting independent political expenditures by corporations and unions, including funding ads and communications that mention candidates, because such restrictions are a form of speech suppression.
5. The decision was not narrowly about this one movie alone.
Although the case arose from the dispute over Hillary: The Movie, the Court’s ruling struck down broad statutory limits on corporate and union independent expenditures and electioneering communications, overruling parts of earlier precedents and fundamentally changing campaign finance law.
So yes: the origin of the case involved an attempt to restrict ads for a movie about a politician near an election—but the Supreme Court’s actual holding was much broader: that such government bans on independent political spending by corporations and unions violate the First Amendment. Info from here with help from AI: https://www.loc.gov/item/usrep558310/?utm_source=chatgpt.com
Critics argue:
Corporations are artificial legal entities created by the state.
They do not possess political rights in the same way natural persons do.
The Framers did not contemplate corporate election spending as protected political speech.
The dissent argued that treating corporations identically to individuals ignores structural differences between them.
The ruling ignores real disparities in political power.
Even some conservative scholars have questioned whether:
The Founders intended the First Amendment to protect corporate electioneering spending.
Early American law regulated corporations heavily and treated them as creatures of the state.
Corporations are not “artificial legal entities” at all. They been documented since ancient Rome. Now how they are treated for tax purposes has been created by the state.
Does that give them “personhood” and the rights that the Consitution gives to people? It’s a tricky question. If it doesn’t, then all the large non-profits who accumulate separate PACs to lobby governemt and elect congenial politicians, shield individual donors from the limits on political contributions, etc are also non-persons incapable of banding together for political purposes.
As to the Founders- it’s a disingenuous argument since the founders never contemplated entities created for tax purposes at all. Me? I could do without all lobbyists and anything other than individual campaign contributors. But I’m not sure that the Sierra Club, NAACP and many others would agree to not aggregating donors based for political action. .
Yabut ya raise some good points about the complexity of corporate personhood and collective political action. It’s true that legal entities — like corporations, unions, and nonprofits — have existed for centuries, and modern law gives them certain rights so they can function (own property, enter contracts, sue and be sued, etc.).
Where it gets tricky is when those operational rights extend to political speech and influence. Both liberal and conservative organizations benefit from the ability to form PACs, raise money, and advocate — think of the Sierra Club and the NRA, or Planned Parenthood and the Chamber of Commerce. Limiting that framework would cut both ways, reducing the political reach of both ideological camps.
The Founders didn’t anticipate today’s vast corporate and nonprofit landscape, but they did value associations as part of free expression and public debate. The real challenge now is drawing a fair line between protecting democratic participation and preventing disproportionate influence by large, well-funded groups — regardless of ideology.
Right on Assemblyman Rogers! I don’t have much hope for your bill when BOTH parties are owned by the mega-wealthy but…at least you are trying- and getting out the word the disastrous effects of the Citizens United decision on our democratic republic