Update on Hawai‘i's bold move to make Citizens United irrelevant: AG kill switch is out; final votes on SB 2471 are Friday. This is really close!

Big news! SB 2471, the bill that no longer grants political-spending power to corporations and other artificial entities in Hawaiʻi, received identical floor amendments in both chambers yesterday. The bill is now resting for the constitutionally required 48 hours and is scheduled for final votes in both houses tomorrow, Friday, May 8 — the last day of session. If it passes both chambers, it heads to Governor Josh Green's desk.

What the bill does. SB 2471 takes a structural approach to corporate political spending that no other state has enacted. Rather than regulating speech (the path foreclosed by Citizens United in 2010), it operates upstream of that decision by defining the powers Hawaiʻi grants when it charters a corporation, LLC, or other artificial entity, and the powers Hawaiʻi requires foreign entities to respect when doing business here. Political spending is not among the powers granted. The reform treats artificial persons as creatures of state law whose powers the state defines — which is black-letter corporate law going back two centuries — and applies that principle to election and ballot-issue activity.

if signed, the bill takes effect July 1, 2027.

Why this would be historic. Hawaiʻi would be the first state in the country to enact this kind of reform. A parallel ballot-initiative effort is going gangbusters in Montana, but voters there can't speak on this until November. If SB 2471 clears both floors Friday and is signed, Hawaiʻi will set the template for every other state whose citizens want to reclaim their politics from dark and corporate money.

This is the furthest any state has gotten. It has been a remarkable session of work by the chairs, the conferees, the staff, and Hawai‘i's fired-up people, who want to make this change happen.