Hawai’i Just Broke New Ground In The Fight Against Citizens United
Scripts, language, volunteer opportunities for a new way forward to stop corporate money in politics
A compromised Supreme Court opened the floodgates with the Citizens United decision, and our democracy has been drowning in corporate money ever since. It’s led to the creation of super PACs which empower the wealthy and the expansion of shadowy nonprofits shaping our politics while hiding who’s behind them. Corporations spent $1.4 billion in the 2024 presidential cycle alone.
Conventional wisdom has it that the only way to end the Citizens United regime is for a future Supreme Court to overturn it or to amend the Constitution – getting two-thirds of both houses of Congress and three-quarters of state legislatures to defy the billionaires and big businesses. But analysts led by Center for American Progress fellow and former FEC lawyer Tom Moore have been pushing an innovative approach to take on corporate power: rewriting state codes to explicitly deny corporations they charter the authority to spend in elections.
It’s legally well-established and uncontroversial that corporations derive their power from the states, and the states can place limits on what they can do. To be more attractive to businesses, most haven’t done much with that power the last century or so. But they can. As Hawai’i state senator Karl Rhoads put it, corporations aren’t people, they’re piles of paper. They’re created by law, and we can change that law if we want to change them.
This idea has taken off. Legislation pursuing this method of end-running Citizens United has been introduced in 15 states (see the list here), and folks in Montana are trying to push it through as a ballot initiative. Hawai’i passed their version, S.B. 2471, nearly unanimously, and yesterday Governor Josh Green signed it into law. This could be a game-changer.
This, to be clear, is not a perfect or complete solution. We are going to see legal challenges against this effort for years to come, in a judicial system stacked with the sort of right-wing judges who caused this mess in the first place. Even if it does stand, it impacts corporations, not individuals - folks like Elon Musk, Ken Griffin, Richard Uihlein and Jeff Yass will still be able to spend what they want. But we’re talking about getting billions out of our elections, the first major disruption to this crooked system. And we’re talking about rejecting the ridiculous idea of “corporate personhood” that has been forced on us by the puppets of the powerful. We are taking power back for regular Americans and restoring a little bit of sanity to politics.
Let’s make sure Hawai’i is just the beginning.
🗣️ We can contact our own legislators and governors and ask them follow the Aloha State’s lead. We can find call scripts and email language below, or send this message directly using Resistbot by texting SIGN PSIYZJ to 50409. We can also check whether there are bills already introduced in our state we can encourage them to support here. 🗣️
🙋🏽♀️ We can also join the fight to pass it via ballot initiative in Montana. If we’re in the state, we can find out how to add our signature to get it on the ballot here and sign up to volunteer here. The Transparent Election Initiative will also be holding a webinar on Monday at 7PM ET/5PM MT about “the Montana Plan,” emphasizing how supporters across the country can help advance I-194. Let’s sign up to join them here. 🙋🏻♀️
🙋🏿We can get more information and sign up to be part of this movement with the Transparent Election Initiative here. 🙋🏻
🔁 And we can share this video explaining this new approach with our networks. Huge majorities of Americans have long wanted to take our country back from the oligarchs, let’s them know we’ve got a plan! 🔁
Last updated 5/15/26.
PHONE SCRIPTS
You can find contact info for your legislators here and for your governor here. Please adjust, add, and reword as you would see fit - you will be most effective speaking in your own words!
You can see if legislators in your state have already introduced a version of this legislation and get the bill number here.
Hi, my name is _________, and I’m a constituent from (city, zip). (If voicemail, leave street address).
I’m calling to support a new effort to undo Citizens United and get corporate money out of our politics.
Hawai’i just passed a law to rewrite their state codes, banning chartered corporations from spending on elections. [ADD: There’s a bill in our legislature already to do it here, too, BILL #]. We need to do the same/pass that measure as soon as possible.
I am fed up with watching big money hijack our government and being told there’s nothing we can do about it. This is a chance to fix our broken system, and get power back for regular people. We have to take it.
Please introduce/co-sponsor/back our own version of this Hawai’I law, now.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
EMAIL LANGUAGE
We can send this message directly to our state legislators and governor by texting SIGN PSIYZJ to 50409. We can also find contact info for legislators here and for governors here.
We can find out if a version of this plan has been introduced in our state, with the bill number, here.
A compromised Supreme Court opened the floodgates with Citizens United, and now American democracy is drowning in corporate money. Creative advocates have suggested a new way to try to keep our heads above water: rewriting state codes to explicitly deny chartered corporations the authority to spend in elections. Our state should step up and pursue this lifeline to reclaim power for regular people.
We’ve spent a decade and a half watching in horror as corporations bought the vote with limitless, often secret spending, believing there was nothing we could do to stop them without amending the U.S. Constitution. But it’s a clear and legally uncontroversial fact that corporations derive their authority from the states, and states can define what they can and can’t do. That’s something we can and must use to disrupt this crooked system.
The fight is already well underway. Hawai’i just became the first state in the nation to put this plan into practice, passing S.B. 2471 into law. Similar bills have been introduced in 14 other states, [ADD: including BILL # in ours.] It’s also being pursued as a ballot initiative in Montana.
This is not a silver bullet to make bribing politicians illegal again, and of course well-heeled corporate attorneys will use their massive resources to wage legal war on it. But it is a step forward, and a much-needed restraint in a campaign finance system that’s destroyed most meaningful limits and silenced normal Americans. It’s also a rejection of the ridiculous idea of “corporate personhood” that has been forced on us by the puppets of the powerful. Corporations are piles of paper, created by law and subject to it, and we’re going to act like it.
The billionaires and the big corporations have hijacked our politics. We need to be willing to try every tool available to us to make it work for us, and not the oligarchs. Please help make this plan to undo Citizens United law in our state as soon as possible.