Not by whoever can write the biggest check
In 2010, the Supreme Court ruled in Citizens United that corporations have the same free speech rights as people, and that spending money on elections is a form of free speech. Corporate dark money in elections grew from $359 million to $1.4 billion almost overnight. In the 2024 election cycle alone, just 100 billionaire donors contributed roughly $2.6 billion to influence who won the presidency and control of Congress.
When unlimited money floods the most competitive races, the candidate with the most popular ideas doesn’t always win. The one with the most money does. And lawmakers end up more accountable to the corporations and special interests writing the checks than to the voters they represent.
What prompted SCOTUS’ unpopular Citizens United decision? State law.
Decades ago, states began granting corporations the same broad powers as people — including the power to spend money however they chose. The Citizens United decision used these broad powers as precedent: because corporations had the power to spend, restricting that spending violated their free speech rights.
But corporations aren’t people with inherent rights. Their rights are created by state law — their powers exist only because states choose to grant them. And what states give, states can take away.
Earlier this year, Hawaii’s legislature voted nearly unanimously — and with bipartisan support — to strip corporations of the power to spend on political campaigns. This first-in-the-nation policy strips that power from every corporation doing business in Hawaii, whether or not it was chartered there. No corporation, domestic or foreign, may claim a political spending power the state has chosen not to grant.
The States Project builds majority power for state lawmakers who will show up to govern — and fight to make sure voters choose their representatives, not the other way around.
