If you want a quick way to start an argument at a dinner party, bring up the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision and then say the words “corporations” and “free speech” in the same sentence. Fifteen years on, the ruling still sits at the center of America’s campaign finance system, and it still provokes the same basic public reaction: wait, that’s allowed?
What’s new in 2026 is not the outrage. It’s the legal creativity.
Across a growing list of states, Democratic lawmakers and reform advocates are trying an approach that is deliberately designed to sidestep the usual dead ends. Instead of passing campaign finance limits that would be struck down under Citizens United, they’re targeting something more basic: the legal powers that states grant to corporations and other “artificial persons” in the first place. If a corporation only exists because state law says it does, the theory goes, then state law can also define what that corporation is allowed to do — including whether it may spend money to influence elections.
California’s AB 1984 is the clearest example of this strategy, and it’s a good place to start — not only because California is the country’s most populous state, but because California has a habit of turning policy experiments into national templates. Read this excellent piece from Robert Reich for his take.
California AB 1984: The centerpiece
California’s AB 1984 is short on subtlety and long on ambition. Framed as a change to corporate powers, it aims to do three big things at once.
First, it would revoke corporate powers not expressly granted in California law. Second, it would declare that “election activity authority” and “ballot issue activity authority” are not among those powers. Third, it would make the prohibition bite by treating violations as ultra vires — beyond the corporation’s lawful authority — with the possibility of losing charter privileges (think limited liability and other state-conferred benefits) if a corporation steps over the line.
In the bill’s own logic, this is not “campaign finance regulation.” It’s corporate housekeeping: California defining what its state-created entities are empowered to do, and what they are not. The bill’s procedural posture is still early — introduced and awaiting committee consideration — but its significance is obvious: if a state as large and economically central as California tries this approach, it becomes harder to dismiss it as a boutique reform theory.
AB 1984 is also notable because it’s built to be copied. Its language, structure, and enforcement concept match a broader “reset” model appearing in other states this year. That is not an accident; it’s the point.
What Citizens United did — and why it matters so much
In 2010, the Supreme Court held in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission that the government generally cannot ban independent political spending by corporations and unions — meaning spending for ads and other advocacy that is not coordinated with a candidate’s campaign. The Court treated these expenditures as political speech protected by the First Amendment.
Two clarifications matter for real-world impact. One is that Citizens United did not legalize direct corporate contributions to federal candidates. Those direct contributions remain prohibited under federal law. What the decision did was open the door wider for corporate treasury funds (and money routed through various entities) to support independent expenditures and the modern ecosystem of outside spending.
The other is that the decision helped supercharge the “outside spending” model — super PACs, politically active nonprofits, and other groups that can spend heavily in elections, sometimes with partial or minimal donor transparency depending on the vehicle. You don’t have to take anyone’s word for how much this changed the system. The numbers tell the story.
The money after 2010: outside spending and corporate influence, in hard numbers
Friend-of-BillTrack50 OpenSecrets’ tracking of federal election “outside spending” shows how dramatically this lane has widened since Citizens United. In 2010, outside spending sat at roughly $494 million. In 2012 it jumped to about $1.28 billion. By 2020 it was about $2.95 billion. And in 2024, outside spending hit a record $4.46 billion, with OpenSecrets reporting that more than two-thirds of that spending came from groups that do not fully disclose the sources of their funding.
OpenSecrets also documents how “dark money” and shell-company contributions have become a defining feature of the ecosystem: contributions from opaque sources to federal political committees were under $71.7 million in 2016, compared with $653 million in the last presidential cycle, and $617 million during the 2022 midterms.
Corporate spending specifically is harder to measure cleanly because influence can be exercised through multiple channels and disclosure regimes. But reform groups compiling post-2010 data point to hundreds of millions in corporate-funded election influence, even before you get to the activity that is lawful but structurally difficult for the public to trace in real time.
In other words, the post-Citizens United era didn’t just change the rules; it changed the operating system.
The unpopular ruling that never got more popular
Whatever you think of Citizens United as constitutional doctrine, it has been politically radioactive for a long time. Back in 2010 — right as the decision landed — Gallup found 76% of Americans favored limits on how much corporations and unions can spend to influence elections.
More recently, polling analyzed by OpenSecrets (based on a YouGov survey commissioned by Issue One) found that almost two-thirds of Americans said they disagree with the Citizens United decision, including majorities of Democrats, independents, and Republicans. That broad unpopularity is the political fuel for what you’re seeing now: if Washington can’t (or won’t) fix it, states and advocates will keep trying to engineer a workaround.
The Montana Plan: the model that’s trying to go statewide first
If AB 1984 is the high-profile legislative version, the Montana Plan is the grassroots constitutional version — and it’s the closest thing this movement has to a flagship prototype.
The strategy, in plain language, is to treat corporate political spending as a corporate-power issue, not a campaign-finance issue. The Plan’s drafters argue that Citizens United blocks the government from restricting a corporation’s speech rights once the corporation exists with full powers. But a state, they say, can still decide what powers it grants to its corporations (and what it does not), because corporations are creatures of state law in the first place.
The Montana effort has been pushed by the Transparent Election Initiative, with reporting describing it as a proposed 2026 constitutional initiative aimed at changing corporate charters to prevent corporate election spending and reduce anonymous pass-through structures.
A key development: Montana’s Supreme Court blocked the initial ballot initiative wording
This is not just a theoretical debate — it’s already in court. On January 6, 2026, the Montana Supreme Court affirmed the Attorney General’s rejection of a proposed constitutional ballot initiative (Ballot Issue 4) connected to the effort, holding that it violated Montana’s “separate-vote” requirement because it bundled more than one substantive constitutional change together.
That procedural roadblock matters because it highlights the double challenge the Montana Plan faces: first, clearing state constitutional mechanics (ballot design, drafting rules, voter comprehension requirements), and second, surviving the inevitable federal constitutional fight if a version is enacted.
Where Montana differs from California’s AB 1984
California’s AB 1984 and the Montana Plan share the same heartbeat — “no election activity authority, no ballot issue authority” — but they diverge in form and likely litigation posture.
California’s approach is a statute: the Legislature is attempting to revise corporate powers through the normal lawmaking process. Montana’s approach has been framed as a constitutional initiative, which can be politically powerful (a popular vote carries symbolic weight) but legally vulnerable to state constitutional drafting constraints, as the Montana court decision illustrates.
Montana’s draft language also goes into unusual specificity, including definitions of “artificial persons,” “charter privileges,” and the concept that election-related corporate activity is ultra vires and void, with forfeiture consequences. That detailed architecture is meant to force courts to treat this as corporate-law design rather than speech regulation — but it also gives challengers more to target.
The rest of the 2026 field: three main approaches
Beyond California and Montana, in 2026 there is a broader wave of bills and resolutions in state legislatures attempting the limit corporate influence over elections in a similar way. The map below shows some of the key bills. Click a state for the bills in that state, and then Detail to read a bill.
The bills cluster into a few recognizable strategies. They often share language, effective dates, and enforcement concepts, which suggests that lawmakers are drawing from a common template — sometimes explicitly framed as a plan to “beat” Citizens United by redefining corporate powers.
Approach one: the “corporate power reset” bills (statutory)
This is the AB 1984 model: rewrite state corporate and entity law so that “election activity” (and often “ballot-issue activity”) is treated as outside the scope of what the state has authorized an artificial entity to do. California’s AB 1984 anchors this category, but it is far from alone. Georgia’s HB 1046, Maryland’s HB 1378, Minnesota’s HF 3419, Missouri’s HB 3396, Rhode Island’s S 2619, Virginia’s HB 1447, and Vermont’s H 0793 and S 0322 all aim, in one form or another, to define election spending as something a state-created entity is simply not empowered to do.
Several states lean into the same idea with slightly different drafting styles. Illinois’ HB 4435 frames the concept bluntly as “corporate election activities.” Kansas’ HB 2766 uses the broader “artificial persons” framing. New York’s paired measures, A 09233 and S 08613, similarly regulate an artificial person’s role in election-related spending and related authority.
Hawaii is the most prolific in this lane, and it shows how the “reset” concept can be expressed on a spectrum from narrow to sweeping. Hawaii’s HB 2125 and SB 2825 focus on clarifying that corporate powers do not extend to “election activity,” while Hawaii’s more explicitly “powers” oriented bills, HB 2130, SB 2471, and SB 2829, track more closely to the “powers of artificial persons” framing used elsewhere.
One Hawaii bill is worth flagging as a bridge between lanes. Hawaii’s SB 2039 is an especially aggressive statutory design that ties the prohibition to dissolution and personal liability concepts, but it is written to take effect only after a constitutional change (which connects directly to Hawaii’s amendment proposal discussed below). In other words, Hawaii is pairing a corporate-power statute with a constitutional backstop, rather than betting entirely on one theory.
Approach two: state constitutional amendments
A second cluster tries to move the “reset” idea into the state constitution itself, often using voter-facing language about natural persons, corporate rights, and political spending. Alaska’s HJR 31 and Arizona’s SCR 1053 are prominent examples, both aiming to hard wire limits on corporate or artificial-entity political spending into the constitutional text rather than leaving the policy as ordinary statute.
Other states are pursuing similar constitutional routes. Hawaii’s SB 2040 proposes a constitutional amendment designed to authorize regulation, restriction, or prohibition of non-natural persons’ participation in election and campaign finance activity (which is why Hawaii’s SB 2039 is drafted to be contingent on such an amendment). Iowa has two joint resolutions in this space, SJR 2004 and SJR 2009. Massachusetts’ S 8, Missouri’s HJR 160, and Oklahoma’s HJR 1075 likewise pursue state-constitutional changes as the mechanism for reining in corporate or artificial-entity election spending.
As a practical matter, these measures are politically salient because they invite a statewide referendum conversation about corporate influence. Legally, they still face the reality that a state constitution cannot override federal constitutional doctrine, so many advocates view these as either (a) a way to strengthen the “corporate powers” argument in later litigation or (b) a means to build momentum toward a federal constitutional change.
Approach three: pressuring Congress toward a federal constitutional amendment
A third approach admits—either explicitly or by implication—that the cleanest path around Citizens United is federal: a constitutional amendment (or, at minimum, congressional action that tees up a new test of doctrine). Massachusetts has two measures that directly call for a U.S. constitutional amendment and outline an Article V convention strategy if Congress does not act, H 3842 and S 2463. Minnesota’s SF 569 and SF 1033 take the “memorializing Congress” route, urging federal lawmakers to clarify that constitutional rights attach to natural persons and that spending money to influence elections is not equivalent to protected speech.
These measures are the most candid about the uphill math. A federal constitutional amendment is extraordinarily difficult under Article V, which is precisely why these bills often function as messaging vehicles and coalition-builders: they create an official record that state legislatures are asking Congress to revisit the post-Citizens United campaign finance framework.
A related but different lane: narrower campaign finance restrictions and disclosure mechanics
Not every 2026 bill is trying to “outflank” Citizens United through corporate powers or constitutional structure. A smaller set focuses on narrower campaign finance interventions that can be framed as contribution limits, PAC rules, or disclosure/loan mechanics rather than a direct ban on independent expenditures by corporate speakers. Maine’s LD 1350 targets corporate contributions to candidates and caps certain contributions to PACs making independent expenditures. New York’s A 06244 and S 00644 focus on restrictions involving corporate contributions and campaign loan treatment. Vermont’s H 0729 zeroes in on corporate PAC spending in state elections.
These narrower proposals may be more achievable in the short term in some states, but they also tend to produce incremental change rather than the sweeping “reset” envisioned by AB 1984-style bills.
Partisan reality: this is a Democratic project (for now)
What's striking is the lack of even a single Republican sponsor on any of the bills. these measures are introduced by Democrats, and the broader sponsorship lists are overwhelmingly Democratic as well. That shouldn’t be surprising. In modern U.S. politics, Citizens United has become aligned with the Democratic reform agenda and opposed (or at least deprioritized) by most Republican leadership, even if Republican voters often express discomfort with unlimited corporate spending in polls.
The practical consequence is that these bills’ chances depend heavily on where Democrats control state institutions and on whether leadership is willing to spend political capital on a legally aggressive concept that will invite immediate litigation. Even in deep-blue states, that’s not a trivial ask.
Chances of passage: a split forecast
It's early days - no bills have progressed further than committee stage at the time of writing. Check back in later in the sessions to see if that changes.
If you’re looking for a clean prediction, it’s this: some bills will pass, many will stall, and almost any meaningful “reset” will end up in court. The “corporate power reset” bills are ambitious enough to trigger unified opposition from business groups, high-powered litigation organizations, and — depending on the state — officials who may be reluctant to invite a federal constitutional showdown. Montana’s experience already shows that even getting to the ballot (or through drafting review) can be a hurdle, before you even reach the First Amendment fight.
On the other hand, states like California and Massachusetts have both the political alignment and the institutional capacity to move complicated governance ideas further than most. A bill doesn’t have to become national law to be influential; it only has to become the test case everyone else watches.
If these ideas spread: how American politics could change
If versions of AB 1984-style “power resets” were widely enacted and upheld, American politics would not become money-free. It would become money-rerouted.
Corporate political influence would likely shift even more heavily toward lobbying, trade associations, litigation campaigns, and policy advertising that avoids express election advocacy definitions. Candidates and parties might regain some oxygen if outside spending were meaningfully constrained, but sophisticated donors would look for substitute channels fast — and they would find them.
At the same time, widespread enactment would force a deeper national confrontation with a question Citizens United mostly treated as settled: whether corporations are simply speakers with rights, or state-created entities whose privileges can be conditioned to protect democratic integrity. If multiple states pass these laws and the Supreme Court strikes them down, reformers will likely argue that only a constitutional amendment can resolve the contradiction. If the Court upholds them, you could see a genuinely new era of state-by-state experimentation in election finance — with California, as usual, acting as the opening act everyone else pretends they’re not watching.
Either way, the most realistic prediction is that the next chapter of campaign finance politics won’t be written only in Congress or the Supreme Court. It’s being drafted right now in state legislatures — and in bills with names that sound like corporate law footnotes, but ambitions big enough to reorder the electoral map.
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