12 votes

Bipartisan plan to get money out of politics in Montana

Posted by thearctic
Tags: politics.usa, usa.mt, government.local, courts.supreme, supreme court of the united states, citizens united, bipartisanship, opinion, author.tom moore, source.usa today
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2025/09/17/supreme-court-citizens-united-campaign-finance-politics/86116869007/

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Title
Americans want dark money out of politics. We don't have to wait for Supreme Court. | Opinion
Word count
873 words

4 comments

  1. [2]
    thearctic
    Link
    Was completely unaware that this was possible. If this sticks, it'll be a monumental shift in American politics.

    In Citizens United, the Supreme Court treated Virginia as having granted its corporations, including the nonprofit corporation at the center of the case, the power to spend money in politics with “the same powers as an individual.” That assumption is debatable, but once the court assumed the plaintiff corporation had the power to spend in politics, it reasoned that the U.S. Constitution guaranteed the right to use it.

    However, the court has never required states to grant their corporations political powers in the first place. Corporations are not born; they are built. They are creatures of statute, not of nature. And the court has always held that the power to build them – to define their form, limits and powers – belongs to states alone.

    Our strategy draws on this forgotten authority. Its design is straightforward: Amend state law so that corporations are no longer granted the power to spend in politics.

    ...

    “The Montana Plan,” as local organizers have dubbed it, is moving toward the state’s 2026 ballot as a constitutional initiative. Its language leaves no doubt: Montanans want corporations out of their politics, and they intend to make that decision stick.

    Was completely unaware that this was possible. If this sticks, it'll be a monumental shift in American politics.

    16 votes
    1. Englerdy
      Link Parent
      If it succeeds in Montana hopefully other states will be able to use it as a framework to imitate.

      If it succeeds in Montana hopefully other states will be able to use it as a framework to imitate.

      8 votes
  2. donn
    Link
    That's really smart! They also address the part that concerned me when I first saw the headline: If the current SCOTUS decides to get creative, it could just decide "yeah corporations in other...

    That's really smart! They also address the part that concerned me when I first saw the headline:

    The move binds both in-state and out-of-state corporations. The authority of states to regulate all corporate activity within their borders is as old as the republic. In 1869, the Supreme Court held in Paul v. Virginia that a state may decline to grant out-of-state corporations powers “prejudicial to their interests or repugnant to their policy.”

    If the current SCOTUS decides to get creative, it could just decide "yeah corporations in other states are people now," esp. that part of that ruling has been overturned. But still, this is 100% worth trying.

    5 votes
  3. JCPhoenix
    Link
    The author of this op-ed has actually been posting a bunch about this on reddit, particularly on the state and state politics subreddits. He even had an AMA on r/politics recently. And from what...

    The author of this op-ed has actually been posting a bunch about this on reddit, particularly on the state and state politics subreddits. He even had an AMA on r/politics recently. And from what I've seen, seems like people are really interested. Definitely a novel way of trying to rid ourselves of the cancer that is Citizens United.

    Though like others have said, who knows what creativity this SCOTUS will come up with to stop it. But at least it's an attempt, and one that doesn't rely on the federal government to do so.

    1 vote