Hawaii Legislature Passes Nation’s First Bill Targeting Citizens United Decision

HONOLULU (CN) – Invoking America’s Founding Fathers, the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom and the sugar industry’s immense influence over the islands’ politics, Hawaii lawmakers on Friday approved a first-in-the-nation bill to strip corporations of their power to spend money in state elections.

The bill takes aim in the 2010 US Supreme Court Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision, which allowed corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money on elections. Legislators, drawing from a legal theory developed by the Center for American Progressargued that because states create corporations and give them their own powers, Hawaii can simply refuse to give corporations the power to spend in elections.

Hawaii’s Democratic-dominated legislature voted 24-0 in the Senate and 50-1 in the House to send Senate Bill 2471 at Gov. Josh Green’s desk. If signed into law, it will take effect on July 1, 2027.

Debate on the floor of the Chamber

In the House of Representatives, Republican state Rep. Kanani Souza opened the debate with a call to action.

“Quiet, who does this democracy belong to?” Souza said. “Is it the people of Hawaii, whose voices, votes, and lived realities give meaning to this institution? Or is it corporations, entities created by the state, empowered by law, enriched by privileges, but never intended to be political equals with the very people who gave them existence?”

Souza argued that Citizens United had fundamentally distorted American democracy by raising corporate spending to a force that no individual voter could really match.

“Hawaii is not waiting for permission, not following the example of others,” she said. “We are leading.”

Not every member of the House was convinced. State Representative Chris Muraoka, also a Republican, said he supports the intent of the bill, but cautioned that Hawaii Attorney General Anne Lopez has already concluded that the measure is likely to be struck down in court and that taxpayers would cover the cost of her defense.

“The people of Hawaii, who are already struggling to make ends meet here, will have to pay another bill,” Muraoka said.

He cast the only “no” vote in the House.

State Rep. Scott Matayoshi, a Democrat, acknowledged the legal risk, but said that was exactly the point. He pointed out Citizens United itself was a lawsuit that overturned the existing law of the land, Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerceand argued states must similarly demonstrate challenging the problematic laws.

“If states are not brave enough to challenge Citizens United and other court decisions at the highest court in the land, those decisions will stand forever,” Matayoshi said. “We need states to step forward to challenge these decisions.”

Matayoshi also pointed to a key failure built into the conference draft: If a court were to strike down the bill’s application to out-of-state entities while leaving Hawaii’s restrictions intact, the measure would automatically unblock Hawaii corporations, preventing a scenario in which mainland corporate money flooded in while local voices died out.

In the Senate

Democratic state Sen. Karl Rhoads, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and lead author of the bill, said Hawaii’s opposition to Citizens United dates from the day the decision was overturned.

In April 2010, just months after the ruling, the legislature passed a concurrent resolution calling on Congress to propose a constitutional amendment to overturn it. Sixteen years later, Rhoads said, nothing had changed except the scale of the problem.

“In 2006, dark money was less than $5 million nationwide,” Rhoads said. “In 2024, there were over $1 billion, with a B, spent anonymously on presidential elections alone.”

Rhoads warned that the anonymity of dark money also invited foreign interference.

“It’s very difficult to know whether Russia, Iran or China is pouring money into American elections,” he said.

Democratic Sen. Jarrett Keohokalole drew a sharp distinction between the rights of citizens and the powers of corporations, a distinction he said. Citizens United had blurred.

“Our rights as individual people do not come from the government or the Constitution,” Keohokalole said. “As Thomas Jefferson said, all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. They pre-exist government. Government does not give us rights. They recognize and protect them.”

Corporate powers, Keohokalole argued, are an entirely different matter.

“They are created by state law,” he said, paraphrasing the Supreme Court John Marshall’s 1819 opinion in* Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward*: “A corporation is an artificial being. It possesses only such property as the charter of its creation confers upon it.”

He then drew a direct line from that history to Hawaii’s own experience with corporate power. The overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1893, he said, was organized and executed by the sugar companies. The “Big Five” then ruled HawaiiFor 50 years before a new generation of residents ran for office, took over the legislature and won citizenship, workers’ rights and health care for the islands.

“As elected leaders, we do not serve artificial entities,” Keohokalole said. “We serve the people and now is the time for us to stand up again and be the first state in the country to act for them.”

The state Attorney General’s Department testified in opposition, warning that the bill would likely be impossible to defend without Citizens United being overturned. Some labor groups also opposed the move, arguing that it could limit the unions’ political activity, although a proposed union split was rejected at the conference.

Friday marked the last day of Hawaii’s 2026 legislative session. Green now has until June 30 to announce any potential vetoes and until July 15 to either sign the bills into law, issue a final veto list or allow the measures to become law without his signature. Lawmakers can then convene in a one-day special session to override any vetoes.